Thoughts about submitting my first Master's assignment

Before elaborating on that, I need to clarify that I have assignments of maximum 700 words weekly. However, Tuesday (17 November) was the deadline for the first assignment that is going to be marked. This is a critical essay of 2,000 words, explaining my writing process and choices over a creative piece of mine -I talked about a short story I wrote- while taking into account literary theories and comparing my work to that of other published authors. So now that you know a bit more about my essay, let's see how it went!

Friday (4 days before the deadline)

I just finished my first draft. I don't know if it is wise or not, but I wrote the whole essay on paper. Using a pen and writing down everything really works for me; a tangible white page is less daunting than a digital one. 

I also feel obliged to note that it is absolutely true that starting an essay is the most difficult part. Once I was done with the introduction and I jumped to the literary theory and analysis of my work and of books dealing with the issues I discuss as well, the whole writing process became really enjoyable. 

I am pretty satisfied with what I have written apart from the conclusion. I did recapitulate my main points, but when I read the last sentence, it doesn't feel like it's the end; something is missing. Another issue is that I think that I wrote more than 2,000 words. But I guess that these are problems that I will have to deal with tomorrow when I transfer the essay on a Word file. 

Saturday (3 days before the deadline)

It's 2:35 in the morning and I just finished typing the whole essay while editing it at the same time. I hadn't estimated correctly and the word count of my first draft was about 700 words less than what it should be. This really stressed me out and diminished my motivation. Hopefully, I had one topic that I could add but my mood was totally ruined and I couldn't concentrate. This is why I finished so late. I'm pretty sure that I will regret today's failure even more tomorrow.

Sunday (2 days before the deadline)

Things got even worse 😦 Firstly, because I had done my homework for tomorrow's class on Friday, I totally forgot to study the assigned essays and poems for Monday's session. So, I spent most of the day doing that. And I thought that that would be okay as I had planned to only do the Works Cited page for my big assignment today. Well, completing the bibliography took me about 6 hours. This is mostly because some of the essays I used were given to us by professors but page numbers were messed up and I had to look for the books where these essays were published on the library database and reread the chapters there in order to find the correct page numbers that correspond to a source that I can actually cite. I'm so excited about my 3.5-hour beauty sleep.

Monday (1 day before the deadline)

I reread my draft and I made a few corrections at my Works Cited page. To be honest, I think that the essay isn't so good. I just read a bullet point from my professor's notes saying that our creative piece should be the focus. I'm afraid that I put more emphasis on explaining my sources of inspiration and used more quotes than I should. Right now, I don't have the energy and the mental capacity to change anything. I'll just have to hope for the best.

Tuesday (3 hours before the deadline)

From 9:30 to 12:40 I was working on my essay. I replaced some parts that I believed that had nothing to do with my short story with comments actually relating to it. I proofread it (although I'm sure that I missed some mistakes again) and at 12:49 I uploaded and submitted my essay. Yeah 🙌 

I really can't tell about the quality of my essay; it was the first time that I had to write a critical essay about a piece of writing I wrote. But no matter the final grade, I can say that I did my best. And I know that it is hard, but you should do the same now. So, leave a nice comment and go back to studying!