the all nighter

We’ve all done it, ok, so I’ve at least done it a few times, waited until the last minute to write the paper that will be due the next day. As I was writing my paper last night, I remember thinking, “Gee, I don’t know how this is going to get done.” Then I talked with my girlfriend, and she says, “How long have you known about this?” I sheepishly knew I shouldn’t answer that question, she knew the answer, like an episode straight out of Matlock. After our short conversation (I had a paper to write for Pete’s sake!) I went back to writing. Each sentence had to be painstakingly checked, it’s an exegesis paper which is heavy on research, and one mistranslation can send the paper in a totally new (and wrong) direction! It was about 3 am when I started feeling like I was floating. It was then I realized the level of sleep depravity had sunken to a new low, because while a few years ago 3 am might have seemed like a reasonable bedtime (when in college), now as an old man, 3 am seemed more like the “all nighter” you hear stories about. At the end of it, my typing was getting pretty incoherent. I guess that’s the beauty of it. You may think that being in grad school at a seminary would mean that we do our work well before it’s due… yeah, that is not the case, except for a few married guys who are just on the ball. And now you know, the rest of the story. I’m Ben Douglass. Good bye.