Formula One for term papers: Write now!

Of course, there's something on the table for you. Term papers. Fat, obstinate term papers who look like they feasted on several courses of turkey and mashed potatoes and washed them down with a pitcher of gravy. They've gotten bigger and fouler looking.

That's because we let them loose. They've had months to eat since we first heard of them. They have fed on our procrastination and have snacked on our anxiety. Now they've finally grown to full size as they polished off Thanksgiving with you. All ou

David Wallace

r time, devoured.

Now we've got several of the angry varmints running circles around us and causing the kind of widespread panic not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis. What can we do?

Search through table scraps for that wishbone and give it a pull. Eat some more of that 24-hour fruit salad and see if it keeps you up 24 hours. If it does, eat some more. You're gonna need it.

This time of the year would be more tolerable if everyone were in our same gravy boat. But they're not: In every class, there's some no-good do-gooder already done with the term paper. Get this: He's been doing a little bit each week. Or she wrapped it up over the Thanksgiving holiday while the tryptophan in your bloodstream left you prone like a mainframe leveled by Y2K.

I believe Mulder and Scully should open an X-file on these people. Something's not quite right. Most people collapse through the doorways of their apartments after spending more than 12 hours at classes and then work. After a hard day, I hit the canvas faster than a stooge in a Don King fight. What's keeping them going? Coffee, Coca-Cola, cocaine? I want a full investigation, and then maybe I'll have what they're having.

It's not just those students handing in their papers in November making it tough. It's the complete variance of when papers are due. Because invariably your roommate's papers are due on different dates than yours, and things get ugly.

Your roommate says, "Oh, you've got a big paper due tomorrow. Glad I'm not you. Mine's due next Friday." I believe this statement occurs frequently throughout campus and leads to relationships strained on par with Latrell Sprewell and P.J. Carlesimo.

Then the plague continues as your roommate savors watching television, taking time to eat and having the nerve to sleep while your fingers suffer over a keyboard. You're like Tantalus, and the god you offended is time; everything you want so close, but just out of reach.

But I think for a lot of us, our procrastination stems from factors other than simply putting the papers off for fun or relaxation. Those reasons are like Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula of our pressured time.

The larger chunk stems from perfectionism and paranoia. Like a Formula One crew tackles a car in the pits, so do we revise our papers when they're in the pits. We don't want this paper hitting the wall in turn four, so we've got to check the tires. And we don't want to run out of gas with a lap left, so we've got to add some fuel.

We take it right up to the limit until our last read-through equals the time of a Mika Hakkinen tire change. "Wow, 15 seconds, he's outta there fast!" We floor the gas and off we go to turn in those papers.

Even if I could change the way most of us do our papers - and eliminate all that stress - I'm not sure I would. Sometimes the pressure pushing us to our limit makes us better. In sports, it's called coming through in the clutch.

In the real world, it's called normal. If the boss wants something done, he or she wants it done now. ASAP, Dilbert. When car trouble arises, it can't wait. How often do you see adults out of college with months to plan how they'll tackle their problems? Rarely. Taxes, maybe, but notice most of them wait until April 14 to do them.

If it were up to me, I'd eliminate the looming prospect of term papers from our syllabi. I might be crazy, but if most of us don't do them until the last few days they're due, why not just assign them the first day of class - due the next week - and save us the nagging worries building all semester? Too much last-minute pressure? Most of us spent high school training for it anyway.

- David Wallace can be reached over e-mail at davidmw@umich.edu

Exile on Maynard St.

11-30-99