Why to treat your essays like one-night stands

No one remembers the nights they had plenty of sleep.


Whether your St Andrews social motto is, “Ball so hard” or “MovAYs and DuVAYs (and Janettas)”, we’ve all been victims of procrastination and what was “I have weeks before that’s due! #YOLO” quickly turns into “Deadline’s tomorrow? *nvkajhrlgheads panicked typing of words onto page*”.

We all know the drill. Pitch up at the library till 2am, walk home alongside those who have been having actual fun (remember those days? *sniff*) and stop for a late night snack to keep you going. Do you think Empire makes anything in caffeine flavour? No? Before you collapse from exhaustion-induced hysteria you have an ingenious idea: crush ProPlus tablets onto your pizza. Why is this not a thing?

You submit something before the deadline. You’re too tired to remember anything you wrote, so that essay could be about the efficient markets hypothesis or it could be about that unicorn dream you had during the accidental nap you took at 5am. Hey, words on a page right? That’s what counts.

Then you just push these dark essay memories to the back of your mind and continue with pre deadline St Andrews motto. That is until you receive that dreaded saint mail reading “Coursework grades are now available on MMS”. Crap. All you remember writing is the unicorn story. Your hands are trembling as you log in and click “coursework”. Say a quick prayer before you slowly open one eye and see…Oh wait, that’s actually decent… you should write more essays like this!

You know what’s good about your essay…it has raw talent. Yes, if I were to compare your masterpiece to an artist, I’d call it Van Gogh…cool before it’s time. The emotion, expression, ambience of your essay is disturbed only by autocorrect. The hours and hours of proof-reading would have simply destroyed your creation’s “unique voice”. Think a musician’s debut albums before they’re signed and autotuned. It’s beautiful, majestic, and snaps to your indie tutor for appreciating it.

Why bother spending days/weeks/even months (I know some of y’all do this, it’s St An-dead-keen-drews) on an essay when you could just have another memorable night to add to the ones from the Lizard. Writing pure sweet essay poetry amongst leftover cans of red bull and coffee granules is a winning formula. As I’m sure someone great like, Winston Churchill or Gandhi once said “No one remembers the nights they had plenty of sleep”. Nae bother.

I particularly direct my case towards first and second years. What’s the point of choosing a 4 year long degree if you don’t make the most of the time you have where nothing matters? You’re free, act like a bird, go out into the world and aim to be on a first name basis with the staff at Kinkell and DJ Ian. Treat essays like one-night stands and avoid thinking about the potentially bad decision you have just made.

Third and fourth years, perhaps this argument isn’t for you. You had your time for one-night essays; this time has now passed. Make good decisions.

I’ll look out for you, night before-ers. We should make a date in the library. I’ll bring the caffeine.

 

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