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Books one through six are researched. What about book seven?
It’s entirely on your topic. This is good for information but
a problem for taking notes. What do you annotate and what do
you leave out? Don’t forget that note cards can only hold so
much.
Finally all the research is done, and it’s time to make an
outline. If only you had software that contained various outlines
to choose from. It’s 10:30 p.m. and the library is closing.
Your body wants to sleep, so you quit and decide to start tomorrow.
The paper is due in one day.
You go to your other classes, wasting about six hours of writing
time. After classes are done you're back in the library, sweating,
hoping for an "A" paper. Since your note cards are organized,
your outline is done in about 45 minutes. You established your
introduction, body, and conclusion. Unfortunately you forgot
about subtopics for the main body. Time to do it all over.
The outline is finally done. It’s now 4 p.m. and you need a
rough draft.
Your rough draft is done quickly, and it looks very rough.
You go over the rough draft to correct all the mistakes. Wait,
your instructor told you to have someone else read it and sign
the bottom as proof that they read it. The only person in the
school library on a Friday night is the librarian, and she is
nowhere in sight. Once you hunt her down and have her read it,
she finds at least five more errors on every page (The librarian
was an English teacher for seven years). You go over the mistakes
and you correct them for the last time. It is now 9:30 p.m.,
giving you plenty of time for the final paper.
Soon the librarian says the library is closing. No problem,
you’ll just save the information on a disk and put it on your
computer in your room. Wait, there is no disk or computer. Too
bad.
You rush to your room and start writing as soon as you get
in. The final copy takes you three hours because you started
getting sleepy in the middle and you made mistakes. You wish
you had a program that could check spelling and errors as you
type, like today's Microsoft Word.
You reach over to turn off the light so you can go to bed,
when you remember that the instructor wants to see at least
one photo of your topic. It would be nice to have a scanner
so you could scan a picture and print it out on your laser printer,
but you don’t have either yet. Luckily the dorm has a photocopy
machine downstairs. You make your way downstairs to make copies
and realize that you need 10 cents per copy. You go back up
and find enough change in your couch to make three copies.
Finally the paper is done.
Too soon, you wake up to the sound of the alarm. You only
slept for three hours, so you feel terrible. You look up to
see a computer, a printer, and a scanner sitting on your desk.
Yes, it was only a dream.
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