Anything Goes

As students, we all have that one assignment every semester that we start to dread the minute the instructor goes over the syllabus. It may be a project, a paper, a presentation, or sometimes a combination, but the dread it creates is almost always the same.
We wonder how we will ever get it finished; we toss around ideas and brainstorm, wondering all the while just where to start; we swear this time we aren't going to put it off until the last minute; we talk to our peers about what they're doing, and then regret asking because it makes us feel further behind; we irrationally hope that the assignment will somehow be forgotten or we will just magically run out of class time and be unable to fit it in.
But somehow, days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months. It's a month before finals and three weeks until that assignment is due. We set up camp at the library doing research; we frantically schedule group meetings around work for other classes, jobs, and the occasional social outing; we push through sickness; we work even when class is cancelled. We read and re-read the guidelines of the assignment, and then we read them again, just for good measure.
We edit; we count words; we copy handouts; we change the order of powerpoint slides; we hit save every four minutes. We drive ourselves crazy with proper citations and subject-verb agreements. Finally, we print off the final copy and put it into our notebook, where it will stay until tomorrow when it is finally pulled out and turned in, presented, distributed, etc.
We lie down to sleep and think, "It is finished."
We wake up thinking about it, and we check our notebook three times before we leave the house, just to make sure it's still there. We check again an hour later and one more time forty-five minutes later when our pulse starts to race. Finally we walk into that class, see that professor, and prepare to turn in that assignment. We don't even care about the grade anymore, we just want the thing taken out of our hands, and we think it might be okay if we never saw it again.
Tonight, I completed two of those assignments. Same class, same professor, same night.
My brain is mush, but I'm alive, and I feel like I could do just about anything.