in for the night

I'm in for the night. In my office, that is. I'm not going home until I finish this paper, so I'm prepared to spend the night on the comfy couch in my office.

I'm about 2 pages into my 10 page paper. I don't think I've procrastinated this much on a paper this big since college. I'm out of procrastination practice, I guess. I used to write 2 day papers or pull nearly all-nighters all the time in high school and college. I'm glad that I don't do this much anymore. This is my last paper of the semester, grant proposals aside. I just want to be done with it already so that I can finish doing all of the preparations for Ukezagapia.

I can think of a few reasons that I may be procrastinating more on this paper than others I've written in grad school. Let's explore them while I procrastinate writing my paper by writing about not writing my paper.

1. The expectations and format are vague. The instructions were largely "Write a concise 10-page double-spaced paper about a method new-to-you that can be applied to your research."
   
2. I'm outside of my comfort zone. I'm writing about a method with which I have little experience. This is my second time this semester writing a paper like this. The first one was even further outside of my comfort zone, but I planned better for that one and didn't procrastinate as much.
3. We just finished learning about this method in class on Friday, so I was waiting to start my paper until after that class. Obviously, in hindsight, this was a bad idea.
4. Compared to writing a grant proposal or finishing the 1000 things I need to do before I go to Ukenzagapia, this paper just is not that important. Time consuming? Yes. Critical to the success of my research? No.
   

I think this is one of those times when it's important to know what is "good enough." This paper just needs to be good enough for me to get an A in this class, which shouldn't be too difficult. I can't spend hours agonizing over small details or obscure references. I just need to do it so I can get on with everything else that is more important.

Here I go.