Usually, November is the month when I have a million essays to write, and since it's the last day of the month, I'm going to celebrate by not writing any essays today (and blogging instead).

Over the course of my undergrad, I've developed a "fool-proof" strategy when it comes to essay writing. I know a lot of people have their own methods, some write their essays the night before and get awesome marks (*coughHannahcoughYong*), while others finish it the week before hand and spend the week before its due to revise their essays and get awesome marks as well. Anyway, I put fool-proof in between quotation marks because it doesn't always work and I don't always follow it, but nonetheless, it's the only strategy I have developed.

Ok, so hypothetically, my strategy is:

1) Get essay topics, pick essay topic, research.

2) Talk to professor about said research and get the ok to start essay.

3) Write essay like a beast, have it done at least two days before its due.

4) Get Peter to edit essay (Peter is my handy dandy editor).

5) Hand in essay.

6) Sleep easy.

Sound simple right?

But what actually ends up happening is this:

1) I get the essay topics, pick the topic, think about it a little bit, and then forget about it until I realize I haven't started on the research and then research frantically.

2) Realize researching took too much time, and come up with a loose essay outline. Go to see my professor, where my outline is basically massacred and torn apart. I leave the professor feeling dejected and hopeless, realizing I will never get this essay done. This past semester my professor actually told me to re-start my research and pick another topic all together, and because of this, I didn't have time to get to see my other professors to think talk about my other essays.

3) Write essay(s) like a beast, staying up late at night and sleeping in the next morning, skipping church meetings and end up watching 11 episodes of How I Met Your Mother and 9 Episodes of the Big Bang Theory, not knowing how any of this happened. Plus, I start having Ted's voice narrate my life in my head: "Kids, have I ever told you that one time in November of 2011 when I dreamt that Sheldon yelled BAZINGA! when I manage to completely fail all my essays? And then he proceeded to talk on and on about why on earth people would even waste their time studying literature."

4) After having managed to finish my essay a day before its due, I email it to Peter asking if he could edit it ASAP. The day it's due, I sit by my laptop all day waiting for him to email me back with my edited essay, all the while imagining end-of-the-world-doomed scenarios of what would happen if I don't hand in my essay in time. When I finally receive his email, I read over the edited version and thank God for Peter.

5) Hand in essay. This part of my strategy always goes smoothly.

6) Sleep easy. I never have problems with this part either.

So lesson learned: just because you have a strategy and plan doesn't mean everything will go smoothly and accordingly. And also, I vow to start step one of my plan sooner next time (I make this vow every time).