The last minute

I am a procrastinator of epic proportions. Always have been. I'm also incredibly lucky -- which is why I've never had to learn a hard lesson about the dangers of waiting until the last minute. Don't y'all just hate me right now?

Anyway, Jake and I were just discussing the art of procrastination (and it is an art, for those of us skilled in it) and I remembered my all-time greatest story.

It was junior year in college. Amy calls up Michelle and I and asks if we want to drive to Connecticut to see Poe and Tracey Bonham. Of course we do! Only one problem -- we have a 10-page paper due for American Feminism at 11:00 the next day on a book we haven't yet read and it's a two-hour drive. We decide we'll read on the way there and back and then spend the night in the computer lab writing our respective papers.

Well, we don't read on the way, because we're too busy screaming the lyrics to every song on Exile in Guyville, and then we need to listen to I will Survive a few thousand times because one of us -- I don't recall who -- had just suffered a heartbreak and when you're 20 and a boy breaks your heart and you're in a car full of girls -- dammit -- that's what you listen to.

So we go to the show, it rocks, we sleep on the way back and pull in to Poughkeepsie at 2:30am. We stop for Nodos and 2 extra large coffees, change into flannel pajamas in the car and set up shop in the computer lab. Michelle and I split up the book, skim for important passages, and finish our papers at 10:45. At this point, I haven't eaten and the caffeine coursing through my veins is making me nauseous. I spot a girl from our class and she's clean and she has makeup on and she's printing out her paper and I walk up to her wild-eyed and ravaged and ask if she would please, please hand in my paper for me. She agrees. I go back to my dorm room, throw up and sleep for 10 hours.

I get my paper back a week later. A. I do my best work under pressure.