April 1st Tuesday

I had not gone to bed the night before and was continuing my all-nighter. I had some cereal to keep myself going. I had some more freakouts as the deadline approached until I decided to just finish and send my 9,000 and one of my 3,000 word papers. I wrote an email to my parents once this was all over and to save myself the time of retyping it I’m just going to include it here.

Here is an excerpt from the triumphant email that I sent to my family describing the events:
I think I just witnessed a miracle. I'm going to go become a nun now. Well last night I worked the whole night through. I didn't sleep. I barely took breaks to eat. But this morning I still had one unfinished paper. I'd finished my two others at just over the minimum. My third one had 1,056 words. I needed at least 2,700 because that's the minimum. I figured I could maybe turn in my two complete ones and then turn in my incomplete one a few hours later when I'd finished it. I was debating taking a nap before working on it.

Well then Katharina was online telling me that she'd just been on the phone with Astrid. She said that Astrid was yelling at her and telling her she had to hand in what she had all at once even if it was incomplete. Otherwise, Astrid was going to go to Bath and have them fail her. Well I had a breakdown right there. I started sobbing because I didn't know whether to try to turn in the paper incomplete or pretend I hadn't talked to Katharina and turn it in finished but late. Either way I ran the risk of failing. Adrienne tried to comfort me while I freaked out. I had a few minutes to throw in some concluding lines and just send it. Then I got a call from Astrid herself a bit after noon saying "I was wondering when I could expect your papers." I tried not to sound like I’d been crying as I said "Oh, I just sent them." She said, "Oh! Marvelous!" (She speaks really nice English). Then I confessed to her that one of my papers wasn't done and that I'd just sent her an incomplete one. I asked if I could resend her a copy when it was finished. She asked which paper it was and said "Okay. Do you think you can have it done by two?" I told her I'd try.

I flew like a madwoman to my computer and set to typing. My fingers didn't stop for two hours except to grab quotes from books. Adrienne flew to help me and typed up quotations and source information. With all of our efforts and a few block quotes I was able to hit send on a message at 2:15 pm. The document, including bibliography, came out to 2,739.

I feel like I just saw Santa Claus doing the Easter Bunny. I didn't think it could happen but here I am ready to pass out.

It’s the biggest accomplishment for me so far that I was able to type 1,700 words in French in 2 hours time. I couldn’t believe it. It was such a liberating feeling to send the message. The entire night had been torture.

To celebrate, I sent the email to my family and played around online. I hadn’t gotten to completely veg out online in a while. I went to bed around 4:00pm. Karuna called and then arrived around 6:00pm. She’d flown in from Madrid. She left to go meet some friends. Adrienne and I continued sleeping in bed. I slept until 11:00pm. Karuna called and asked if we wanted to go meet some other friends with her. I didn’t think it was worth it to go out at that time since the last metro was a bit after 12. I stayed home. I probably ate something for dinner but I don’t know what.

Karuna came back a while later. I went to bed around 3:00am.