I am one of those people who has said "I'll never" a handful of times in my life. Each of those "never" situations has inevitably come to fruition. Allow me to explain. Upon visiting one of Illinois's institutions of higher learning, I commented, "I'll never go here." Guess where I spent my freshman year. I said I would never live in a certain central IL city...I did. I said I would NEVER and I mean NEVER move back to another town. Did that, too, and LOVE it! The other BIG never: I would never go back to school...yet, here I am. I suppose I could start chanting, "I'll never win a million dollars; however, that statement would be an example of reverse psychology. None of the previous statements fell into that category of logic. Rather, they were adamant declarations.
Why my absolute anti-grad school sentiments? To be honest, I was a focused, highly studious undergraduate. I had all the time in the world to put towards my classes. I fell into the category of "perfectionist." Perhaps the area in which this tendency reared its ugly head the most was writing papers. I hated that process. Yet, in my agonizing through it, I excelled at it to the point that one of my English professors sat me down in attempt to steer me away from earning a degree in Occupational Therapy. Unbeknownst to him, I had not previously declared, "I'll never be an English major."
For those of you who have grown up in a completely digitized world, I will fill you in on the process of paper writing circa 1990. For starters, online data bases may have been in their infancy. One looked up resources in the card catalog, trekked to said shelf and made copies of any information worth using. (Things got more interesting when microfilm was involved--ugh!) Ergo, there was also no such thing as copying and pasting quotes into a draft. Instead, professors encouraged students to jot notes on 3x5 cards, order them, and craft around those tidbits. Almost no-one had their own computer. One took all the materials to a university computer lab and worked from there...when the labs were open, which was not 24/7.
Do you have a better idea as to why writing papers was no small fete? Oh! I forgot to mention, computers lacked the ability to submit completed works. You had to save to a disk and print them out. Ah, printers...I could go on about that process. Let's just say that printers did NOT function like those of 2023, either.
(Focus, Angela, focus!) In summary, writing papers was my Achilles heel. Perfectionism plus the rigors of research equaled trauma. That was nearly 30 years ago. I am not the same person. For starters, I have worked in many different settings, been married for over 20 years to the same person and have two teenagers. Scratch perfectionism! As for research, hello world wide web! I now find that one of my biggest difficulties when drafting a one-page paper is not getting lost in the bountiful resources at my fingertips. In fact, I have to take occasional breaks to remind myself what the theme of the paper is supposed to be! Subsequently, there is still angst associated with writing papers but a different kind. The kind that reminds me I need to step away because dinner isn't making itself and there's a child who needs a ride home from somewhere.
So, here's the deal, I never thought I'd hear myself say this, I no longer HATE writing papers. I actually kind of enjoy it!
