It’s a bad feeling to wake up in the morning and think, do I have a paper due
\ntoday? I try not to do this very often, but it happened, nonetheless,
\nyesterday at 8:16 a.m. I habitually set my alarm for 8:15 every Tuesday and
\nThursday mornings, but it takes me a minute or so to exit dreamland and
\nachieve sentience in reality. The next thought was equally abrupt but not
\nquite as disturbing: perhaps I have a test today. Then I remembered taking a
\ntest in that class the last time we met. No, there would be no test. But…
\n my only answer lay in the syllabus enclosed in the three-ring binder in my
\nbook bag. I didn’t have far to reach for it. My bed is queen sized, and I
\nhave a custom of putting things of importance on my bed to deal with later.
\n I may be a slob, but I do make an effort to make my bed every day to give my
\nroom at least one corner of order. Otherwise, my living space is an
\nexcellent example of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in action. What I
\nfound, however, is that I could sleep on half of my bed and leave all the
\nother things that had piled up during the day on the other side. Only rarely
\ndo I have such a restless night that I inadvertently kick one of the items of
\nimportance over and off onto the floor, waking up when whatever it was thumps
\nto the ground.<\/p>\n
So sitting up in bed, I reached over and pulled my book bag over, opened it,
\nand flipped to the appropriate section. Two page paper on Rousseau’s Second
\nDiscourse, due April 2. April 2, was that today? My slumber filled mind
\nstruggled with this new concept of chronology. Yesterday was April Fool’s
\nDay, unless someone had been playing an elaborate joke on me. Today was
\nApril 2. I had a paper due. I’d forgotten all about it. Modern Political
\nTheory was my first class of the day. There was no way I could read the
\nSecond Discourse and write a paper on it when I’d set my alarm for just
\nenough time to get to school without being late. The frustration of these
\nrealizations overwhelmed me. My first utterance that day was not an
\nuplifting one.<\/p>\n
The good news is that I have a good average in that class. By handing the
\npaper in late, I only get docked one point from a four point scale. And we
\nwrite several papers. And they get averaged in with the tests. So I’m not
\nreally in danger of much of anything as a result of my absentmindedness.
\n Well, not in this case. But this is the first paper I’ll have ever handed
\nin late. And that irritates me. Because it’s for no good reason at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s a bad feeling to wake up in the morning and think, do I have a paper due today? I try not to do this very often, but it happened, nonetheless, yesterday at 8:16 a.m. I habitually set my alarm for 8:15 every Tuesday and Thursday mornings, but it takes me a minute or so…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonclassified-nonsense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}