thrive

i thrive on this sort of thing, you know.
almost 4am and i'm only halfway along on this final draft for my big nonviolence, peace and justice paper, i mean.
this is what i do. i've been doing this for-- well, since i had mr. shields in high school. i distinctly remember my first all-nighter, ever, that i pulled due to a shields paper. it was my senior year and my sole source of energy was water. glass upon glass of water and i was good to go for the night. i remember thinking "oh no! am i typing too loud?" and feared my parents calling down the stairs to me and asking me why i was up so late. how to explain that it was 3am, 4am, 5am-- and i was still working on a paper due that next school day? bam: there it was. the beginning of possibilities for leisha in the realm of procrastination and paper-writing for my important classes. all of shields' classes were important to me (the most important, besides spanish, of course), and somehow i ended up doing the last-minute paper thing, just about every time after i realized i could do it and get away with it (meaning, do well on the paper).
so, it's this conditioning process on which i'd like to blame my procrastination. i got to college and found out i could do the very same thing-- oh yes, prep and research and write out thoughts well in advance, but the actual paper-writing process?-- right before-hand, baby!
i realized this even more during my sophomore year when i found myself having to pull off last-minute article responses for exceptional learner on a weekly basis (i would finish literally moments before class started, each and every time), then my 10-page philosophy of education paper the night before (hey, i'd just been dumped by my boyfriend and was too busy wallowing around in tears and pain at the time :P), and then: (the biggie!) my proposal for the j. leslie rollins fellowship award that eventually sent me on a 6-week venture to and through india and back. the night before!!!!! and then swasti papers: ohhhhh, yes. especially swasti papers. last year it happened with my paper over buddhism and nonviolence. i was up working on that puppy alllllll night. and that leads me to right now.
i'm writing a paper over education for peace. and i love it. i started researching as early as this past summer b/c i knew i'd be doing some form of project or another on the topic, but naturally, time has flown and the semester has thrown fifty bajillion smaller papers my way and this one has been left for last. (well, not completely last, but as far as major worries go, left for last.) it's almost 4am on the morning that it's due and i've got about 1/2 or so of what i need to have. but i find myself REALLY surprising myself. as slowly as it's going, i'm seeing that what i have is much better quality than what i've ever written before. (that, or the caffeine pills are making me imagine things. don't worry, they won't be made a habit.) weird. i'm diving into my research and naturally wishing i would have done more of this befoooooooooore yesterday or the day before, but as i said, this is what i do.
secretly, i love the rush, the pressure, the stress, the countdown and my knowing that i have 8 hours left until the moment of truth: post that sucker on connected learning for all the world to see, print it off, and turn it in so it can soon make very good friends with a red ink pen. i don't know what it's like to spend a quality amount of time writing a paper (like, spread out over a long period of time instead of a crunched amount of time) anymore. or, have i ever known? will i ever know? i've decided i'll get killed in grad school someday if i continue this. one would think i'd change my habits now but... is it too late? is there still hope? ahhhhhhh who knows.
but one thing i DO know is this:
i've got a paper to continue writing.
excuse me, please, as i get back on that.

note to self: no worries, you can sleep after december 14th.