The Procrastinator’s Guide to Writing College Papers
April 23, 2012 § Leave a comment
Written April 30, 2011
OOO
This is an intro paragraph that I will have started with no hope in my heart for the task that lies ahead*. Here I will be clever, direct, and creative as I tell you all about my thesis that I will have spent the past four and a half hours developing. If I am an overachiever, I will insert some sort of crappy metaphor that I’ll use throughout my paper to pound the life out of my original point. I will support my thesis with three to four bulletproof pieces of evidence that I will use as topic sentences in my body paragraphs. Then I will form the bridge that will serve as a “smooth transition” (as opposed to hairy or prickly or whatever) to my first body paragraph.
I will start this body paragraph off with an irrelevant opinion that I will somehow blend into my first piece of evidence. This will be backed up with even more evidence that has been researched by smart people or else rephrased from a Wikipedia page. I’ll add lots of quotes and parenthesis with last names and numbers in the paragraph so it looks like my citations are just groovy. If I am a nerd and want to kiss the professor’s ass with every paper I turn in, will continue to smear my metaphor throughout this paragraph as I charmingly pull my evidence back to my original thesis.
The second body paragraph is where the reader is formally introduced to my good friend Bull Shit. By now I have realized that my second piece of evidence is complete crap, so I will make this paragraph extra long to make up for it. I will eventually throw words in here such as “inimical” or “enervate” so that I look smart and so that my professor doesn’t rip my paper into thousands of pieces all over his keyboard and call me at two in the morning demanding to know what I had been smoking while I was writing. The metaphor used earlier will be forgotten here, nerd or no nerd, and my thesis will be revised another four times to fit the paper I am now writing.
By the third body paragraph, I will have either been awake for at least 72 hours or have been drinking heavily – both of which will magically make me sound smart and articulate. I will fly through this paragraph with the same protocol as the first and put off the conclusion for as long as humanly possible. When time has run out and I have exhausted my sources and my Cheez-It supply, I will neatly tie my evidence to my thesis, take a deep breath, and jump off a cliff go on to the conclusion of my paper.
Here is where I will proceed to shoot my paper in the foot by writing something that a five-year-old could have pieced together with alphabet soup. I will then collapse on top of my laptop and cover my paper with jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj until I wake up again, delete my previous conclusion, and forget just about all of the writing skills I learned in high school as I write a conclusion based on what the professor want to read. I will tie in my crappy metaphor and make the conclusion extra long as I attempt to make my words relevant to whatever my thesis originally was. I will then realize I revised my thesis to something even I don’t understand, then I’ll go back to paragraph one to change my evidence around so that everything comes together like peanut butter or something else that blends well. Then I’ll skim over what I’ve written, decide that I would like to continue living, and proceed to edit everything for another two hours or so as the sun rises and I decide that caffeine will be my friend for the day.
*Note: this process will have started approximately two days before the due date of the assignment.
Shorts and Snippets 
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