Timetables and Talents

There comes a point in every man's--or woman's--life where you stop and think, "I have a twenty-page research paper due on Friday." I'm proud to say I hit that point today.

Luckily, despite my earlier scrapping and overhaul of my paper, I'm now up to eighteen pages. "Two more to go," some would say. Well, logistically, yes, "two more to go!" But, yet another difference between high school and college is the removal of the common high school ideal that hitting the bare minimum of requirements is acceptable--good, even.

I will be done, technically, in about an hour, when I complete twenty pages, but looking at this paper from a content perspective, there's a lot more to talk about. And, personally, I know I'll be working on this paper until Friday morning, when I believe it is due.

You come to realize that "enough" is not necessarily "enough," and to go above and beyond is to actually complete the assignment. And, I think that's cool. It's yet another motivation that the student must invoke him/herself. The best thing about college is the independence: the fact that you are no longer being encouraged, let alone forced, to make certain decisions, whether for the better or worse, is grand.

Anyway, I'll definitely be able to give a more sophisticated satisfaction review of my paper by tomorrow, but for now, I am definitely satisfied with my progress thus far.

Now: the good stuff.

There is a talent show tonight! And, I can't speak for the rest of my cohort, because I think they chose to go out or do something else on campus instead of attend the even, but I absolutely love talent shows! It's always amazing to see talent, or lackthereof, in a group of my peers. It's especially interesting when your perspective of someone changes whole-heartily because of something you assumed they did or didn't do. That's happened to me a number of times. And, talent aside, there's always a certain boldness and courage to go up on stage, in front of a crowd of people, and live up to the expectation that you are "talented" enough to showcase a "talent."

I have a lot of respect for performers of any kind.

It hasn't started yet, so I'll be getting to that tomorrow, I believe.

Until then.