tense... and release

Thursday, March 11, 2004, at 07:39PM

By Eric Richardson

It's a little after midnight, and I'm on campus. In sixteen hours I have a paper due. In thirteen hours I have to be ready to present code on a conference call for a contract job I'm doing. In a little over nine hours I'm supposed to go in and get my stitches out. And right now, sitting here, I don't want to do any of it.

It's amazing how quiet it is. There's a fountain nearby, and I hear that. There's a low rumble that might be from air-conditioning in a building somewhere. Occasionally I can hear a car, far away from here. Other than that, nothing. The other night we could hear birds chirping outside our apartment. It was one in the morning. No birds here, though.

Freshman year I could write all night. I would start papers after midnight and turn them in the next morning. Then I went home for the summer, came back, and couldn't be productive past two. I don't know what changed. Now I write in the day, but not this time. I wonder if I can even do it.

And then I take a look at the syllabus and wander to the section on late papers. What do I see? An automatic five day extension, that's what. Amazing. I'll sleep tonight after all.