Life in General

3:30 am and on top of everything else, I have a fucking Descartes essay to contend with. “We don’t exist! Nothing exists! But squares! And of course, God!” Oh sod off, you old French fart. Put a piece of wax in it.

It is at times like these that I tell myself I’d rather stab my liver out with a fork than go through writing another thesis statement. Of course, I’m not courageous enough to do that and I recognise that studying is far and away more enjoyable than being chained to a desk at work. To me, anyway.

It’s just that exams and assignments put a huge cap on what you can do and they make you want to do more in return when all you can do is shuttle between school and home, doing nothing all the while. For example, in the past few days, here is a list of the most exciting things that happened to me, in no order of merit.

1) My dog had a sole tick on him. We sprayed him, and the tick was no more.

2) I forgot to close the windows of my room and the floor filled up with rain. So much rain in fact, that when I stepped in, my foot splashed in a puddle.

3) I discovered the niftiest little thing on my laptop. It’s called InkArt and acts a little bit like a simple virtual illustrator on which I can draw and save pictures. It has about eight different drawing tools with paintbrushes, pencils, crayons, charcoal and even a watercolour tool that allows me to smudge my drawings with water. The best part is that there is a little virtual glass of water at the side for my to dip my brushes in when they get dry (and yes, they do get dry) and when I stir the water with my stylus, it makes a bubbling sound.

This makes buying this Tablet PC completely worthwhile because I am a doodling nut and will draw on anything at any time even though it don’t do it very well! So, thank you, Fujitsu, I am, as Harold Pinter would say, “chuffed to my bollocks”. (I used to tell people something similar like “I am freezing my balls off” and they would get agitated trying to tell me I didn’t have any. I know, you fools, I’ve looked. Some people just don’t get metaphor!)

4) The Chinese drama that I’ve slipped into the habit of watching every night has taken an extra dramatic turn (I say extra because on normal days these things are like Days of Our Lives on speed anyway). It turns out there is a love triangle going on between two half sisters and a man who just got in a car accident and the evil half sister is plotting to win the competition ruthlessly. In the meantime, the other half sister is being courted by another guy who also has a crush on a woman twice his age, while his father just came out of hospital. What the extra dramatic turn is, I can’t exactly tell, but there was certainly a lot more shouting, crying, eavesdropping and attempted suicide today.

Ah… the stuff wet dreams are made of.

But by far the most interesting thing that has happened to me took place in one of my regular classes yesterday. We had handed in an essay a couple of weeks ago and as we filed into class, the lecturer regarded us solemnly over her lectern.

“I have something very serious to talk about today,” she announced in her most important manner. “I have evidence that some students, and not “student” but STUDENTS have plagiarised in their essays. Now this is a very serious offence. I have the names of these students, but I will not say who they are. Instead, I want these students (you know who you are) to send me an email confessing what you have done so that the consquences will be less severe. If you do not admit your crime by the end of this week, the results will be serious. I have your records and will look into suitable punishment.”

She paused for dramatic effect and then launched into friendly, animated discussion about the left anterior cingulate.

Naturally, none of us were paying attention by this time, we were all shifting around nervously wondering what to do. Erm no, we don’t know who we are. There are real plagiarisers and then there’s us. Most of us try our bests not to plagiarise if we can help it but it’s hard to tell what with the millions of published papers lying around.

I mean, you think you haven’t copied anyone’s arguments without citing, but it’s not at all easy to tell. It’s damn near impossible to write something completely original and so by this time everyone was well and truly worried.

Over the course of the lesson, it emerged among ourselves that we had three possibilities:

a) Just keep faith in the fact that our papers were innocent and carry on like nothing happened
b) Ask her to contact the plagiarists herself (which she wasn’t planning on doing because of the self-disclosure ploy)
c) Have the whole class confess to be on the safe side and then let her absolve those of us who she thought hadn’t plagiarised.

I mulled over this problem for a couple of days and then when it seemed that everyone was resorting to option (c), I wrote my “confession” this afternoon saying I hope I hadn’t plagiarised and regretted it if I had and sent it in.

Why am I putting this in a post?

Well, this is just in case I suddenly disappear in a few days after receiving a reply from my lecturer. After all, she’s wonderfully nice but she is German… who knows what the Gestapo taught them about punishing cheaters?

So do me a favour if you guys read this. Keep an eye out for me and if you don’t see me around, raise the alarm. Tell them to let my dog out of the house because he knows my scent best (spray him first to avoid a recurrence of that horrid tick problem), keep my folks calm and keep vigil outside my doorstep. Oh, and worse come to worst, please announce what happened to me at my memorial.

They won’t believe it, but we both know it’s true.

Thanks, ya’ll.