Journal Entry No. 3

Someone pointed out to me that I'm on the down hill end of this crazy week. YAY! And it's Wednesday at that. 

I mean, If you consider still having to crank out an 8-pager by tomorrow morning on the down hill side I guess. Actually I read the syllabus and it says 6 to 8 pages! Somehow 6 pages doesn't seem nearly as impossible as 8 does right now. And! I have 258 words going right now. That means something right?? Almost a full page. 

I'm doing a research paper on the terrible effects of stress on your health. Go figure. I'm pretty stressed about it, but the Lord has granted me good sleep in the midst of it. I was awaken by the Lord at 7:05am with ideas for my next paragraph/area of research already swimming in my head. I don't recommend this at all, but I'm researching as Im writing. I have to be time efficient on this one. 

As for my 15minute group presentation for tomorrow, the Lord has been gracious again as my prof announced in class yesterday, "If anybody is set to go Thursday but your schedules are really busy and you're overwhelmed or something like that, you are free to go next Tuesday instead." OHMYGOSH THANKYOU!!! He asked if any body would like that and I was like, "I VOLUNTEER! I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE!!" And he was like, "Okay. You remember then, 'cuz I'm not writing it down."

And then later I got a text from my elusive presentee-classmates asking if we'd like to go on Tuesday since Fern's week is so crazy. (Someone wasn't in class I guess....) Actually I've never met them...er... one of them. No idea what they look like or anything. So I guess she wouldn't know it was I who volunteered as tribute for Tuesday. Either way.. PRAISE GOD I ONLY HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THE PAPER AT THIS POINT IN MY LIFE.

I don't usually use so many capitalized letters in my writing...I'm just going insane. 

Another thing, startup disk is full. I'm typing up this paper and I can't even save it. I can't even use my 'Works Cited' option because it can't save my informations of authors. So, I'm just praying my computer doesn't crash (because it does that often) and I'm praying I don't lose the whole thing.

So.. we'll see. We'll see what happens.  

We are 23 hours, 39 minutes away from this paper being due. I've never turned in a late paper. I've also never pulled an all-nighter in college. Every semester I get to a super stressful point and I always think, "Okay. Tonight is the night. I'ma pull an all-nighter." And then I conk out at 11pm. The latest I've ever stayed up doing home work was 3am My freshman year. Not because I had to, but because my friend's 10-page paper got deleted at 11pm when it was due 7:30am the following day. So I stayed up with her. That was fun. I mean.. stressful for her, but I had fun. 

Okay. Goodness. I need to get another paragraph on this thing. We'll just take it 100 words at a time. :/

-----
It is now 4pm


Crunch time. I mean this morning was crunch time. But Crunch time just got crunchier. 

I need to get this donne. 

---

I feel like a little bit of a crazy genius because I made a realization that boosted my confidence in this paper just a wee little bit. 

I've been writing from the perspective that stress causes certain hormone levels to rise and make an excess secretion of acid in the stomach and cause ulcers. I mean, research supports this view, so why not?

BUT! Along the way, my research brought me to some studies suggesting a sneaky bacteria called Helicobacter Pylori. A pre-existing infection in the guts. 

At first I disregarded this theory because it's not likely that everyone suffering ulcers has infections of the stomach... but this is actually an interesting find. Why?? Because stress stinkin' suppresses your immune system! And if your immune system is suppressed, then these ulcer-inducing bacteria have a chance to do some damage. And then the stress does factor into the ulcers but not for the same reason you may have thought. Isn't that amazing? It's amazing.  

I mean, you're probably not interested in my health psychology research, but I liked making that connection...on my very own. Now I'm redirecting my research a little. 

Guys!! I have 2 whole pages! Okay.. so I need 4 more. But!!! I've got a few hours to work with it.

------
4:23pm

Okay, so, I know I've been focusing all of my research on ulcers for the past 23 hours, but, ya know, things change. Like...paper topics.... 

Right so, this whole discovery about immune system suppression and ulcer development means something. It's more significant than I thought. I mean, I'm going to talk about stress and immune system suppression as the overal topic of research and then my ulcer research can be one of my points. Granted, I'll have to do more research to see what else results from stress... colds and what nots, but I'll work with this. The nature of my disease will now focus on how the immune system works. 

I hate medical stuff, guys. You have no idea. I don't actually care how the immune system works, but I'm about to become an expert. 
------
9:39pm

I just want to some how some way add 500 words to my stinkin' paper by 10:30. That shouldn't be that hard. But research papers are all so picky about having all your information be  cited and backed by research. What if I just want to say my own thoughts on what you should do to prevent illness onset and my own thoughts about how to treat your problem??

Plus I'm still going insane. Or maybe I've achieved insane-hood. I'm SO STINKIN CLOSE to being able to save this thing and walk away. I mean... one page. That's all it'd take. I've got 5 pages and I need one more. If only papers were as easy as blogging. I can make myself type semi-coherent sentences into a blog. When I read my paper, all I read is "aowhofawohf awoe awoadnadsoi aosijawwaosg." That's how much sense it makes to me right now. This is basically all I'm doing right now. 

I'm brilliant I know. Rewording the same thing over and over. And my contacts are sticking to my eyeballs... 

I've skipped 6 hours of class this week so far. That makes me feel like a bad student. But I'm doing it so that I can be a good student and perform well academically. 


-----11:00pm-----

Done. At exactly 11.

Praise the Lord. 


My contacts are stuck to my eyeballs and I can barely read anything I type anymore. But I'm done. 

Just in time too, I feel a sore throat coming on...