What Every Single AP Essay/Project is Like for Me

You know how they say that your eyes are bigger than your stomach? When it comes to projects in school it tends to be that my motivation is bigger than my willingness to actually do work. I have this nasty tendency to get incredibly excited about projects in class that pique my interest - personal choice essays, "soundtrack of my life" projects, whatever - and then expect the moon, the stars, and everything out of my finished product. This is the heart-wrenching, gut-destroying process I go through every 4-6 weeks whenever a teacher has the audacity to assign something I dare to actually give a rat's rear about.

1. Get unnecessarily excited
2. Plan my project/essay the day it is assigned
3. Make said assignment an unnecessarily massive undertaking
4. Plan a timeline which will enable me to finish said assignment in a timely fashion with appropriations for edits, proofing, and general awesome (note: do not factor in time for unforeseen circumstances such as major projects in other classes, mock trial scrimmages, desire to read qc/xkcd/treelobsters/doctorcatmd or any of the other online #$%%&#* rubbish that I read daily, or general sleep deprivation)

Note: Expectations at this point of the finished product include scoring more than 100%, causing my teacher to break down in tears from the sheer beauty of my diction and syntax, ending global warming, curing cancer, and solving the crisis in the Middle East. And a unicorn that poops rainbow skittles (the sour kind, because they are the best).

5. Begin actually working on said assignment, but do not complete enough to constitute a rough draft
6. Decide that whatever I have completed thus far is sufficient to earn a break
7. Allow said break to continue indefinitely until three-five days before the assignment is due
8. Panic
9. Promise myself that I will get my act together and work on the assignment for at least one hour until the due date to ensure quality work
10. Continue to put off assignment because it really is a lot of work and no one will actually care if my paper is only 4 pages instead of the 8-10 pages I told myself was necessary to actually carry through with my grandiose plans. After all, if I get an A it’s all good, right?

Note: Expectations at this point of the finished product include getting an A and avoiding public ridicule.

11. Realize suddenly that it actually is the night before said assignment is due.

Note: Expectations at this point include getting a completed assignment turned in, preferably on-topic if at all possible.

12. Panic
13. Push through and hammer out the last three-quarters of the assignment

Note: Expectations at this point include not failing the class.

14. Sit back and admire my sloppy handiwork
15. Allow myself to take another break for three hours
16. Realize that it is now 2 AM and no one has proofread my train wreck of a paper
17. Bribe a classmate to proofread my paper
18. Refuse to take any of their recommendations to heart because I am obviously their intellectual superior
19. Attempt to print paper
20. Learn that there is no printer paper in the tri-county area
21. Computer crashes
22. Sobbing. So much sobbing.
23. Manage to print out whatever tripe I typed out in between panic attacks and stress eating
24. More sobbing.