Why I can't write papers for school...

I am not a fan of papers, specifically papers for school. I don't mind writing for work, probably because I'm getting paid to do it and it's a direct result of the other work I've done. It also helps that it has a purpose, whereas papers for school are meaningless exercises that will ultimately have no affect on my life. I have written or co-written sizing studies, system manuals, and plenty of presentations for work. Yet here I sit, less than 24 hours until my 'Protocol Design Paper' is due, and I haven't started yet. I've started the protocol design, but not the paper...

Why do I have such a hard time writing for school? Is it just the fact that I'm not getting paid to do it? Maybe it's the fact that I know the writing will ultimately be skimmed once by some TA who has no qualifications beyond having taken this particular class before, and then discarded? I have had my own manuals passed back to me for reference, so I know they are getting used. I have used the system that was purchased based on my sizing study... I have never once looked back at an old school paper. Maybe the grade, the reader's comments to tweak future papers, but never the actual paper.

Of course, the kicker is that as I sit here writing this, I am really just procrastinating. I do that a lot when it comes to homework in general. I realized today that I had managed to forget the fact that I couldn't hold a decent GPA, work, and have any kind of down time when I was in college. Sophomore year I worked about 20 hours, took a full load of classes (15 or 18 credits), and managed to pull mostly A's. I also spent the majority of my Friday and Saturday nights doing homework until 5 or 6 in the morning. Last year I worked full-time and managed two B's in the classes I was taking for work, which amounted to a paper every week. But we were in teams, and I managed to take the technical role on almost every single assignment. I would bust my ass for the first few days working on a MatLab script, a quick program, or whatever, then spend the last few days just writing about what I had done and how the results looked. That was useful, because I'll reference it whenever I need to remember the topic. Did I mention that I also barely got to see Lindsay, and we live together?

Really, I am lucky that for the next year and a half of grad school, I'll be able to do all of my work from home and not have to worry about going for weeks on end where I only see Lindsay while we're getting ready in the morning. Yes, that happened... For about 6 weeks last May / June, we would barely have qualified as roommates to an outside observer. By the way, have I told you how great a girl Lindsay is?

Anyway, enough procrastinating... 'Nothing to it but to do it', right? I'll try putting on my headphones and cranking the music WAAAAY up. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow at 1800 hours.

--Dan

[EDIT] Changed label to "introspective" which is intended for any post that examines the author's own tendencies, faults, etc.