One chapter. Nine commentaries. Eight pages. One night.

I had to write a Hermeneutics paper for my Biblical Interpretation class. It had to be at least eight pages long and include 5 sources. We had almost six weeks to work on it. I started at 4 pm, when it was due at 10:30 am the next morning.

“That’s ridiculous!” you might say, “Talk about procrastination!” But please, let me explain.

I work really hard, and I have a moderately heavy workload. Thus, I spend a lot of time on my homework. So I first work on whatever is most pressing, and then I take a few hours to sleep. Thus, I never really got to my paper because there was always something else to do. However, I am confident in my cramming and writing abilities. Plus, eight pages really isn’t that much.

The day before I had decided on what passage I was going to do, which was Philippians 4. Once I got to the library, I found a desk, and began looking for commentaries. My stack ended up looking like this:

There's a lot of words.

When I had to go to dinner, I hid them among other books. I know, I’m a terrible person, but I really needed those commentaries. Once I got back, I collected them all again and found a new desk to work at. And let me tell you, I dug into that passage. There was just so much to learn. It has a lot to say, and it’s very applicable to my life. I left the library shortly before it’s closing at midnight. I went back to my dorm and kept working. I kept writing until I was finished. It was a late night, but I’m pretty used to those.

I didn’t have my 8 am speech class the next morning, so I got up and read through my paper once to fix my errors. To be frank, I think I wrote a pretty great paper. I ended up using nine sources, having 46 footnotes, and it was eleven pages long. I was pretty satisfied.


POSTSCRIPT: I got my paper back the next week, a shining “99” at the top. Not a single correction on the paper. I’d say that was a job well done.