I’m working fast and furious on a major project/paper due next Tuesday for one of my classes. I have spent much of the semester not complaining about this particular assignment, in stark contrast to many of my peers in the class, because it’s (in theory) a far more palatable assignment than many of the things we’ve been asked to do this semester. In short, we are writing short summaries of roughly 125ish articles in a particular subfield of political science; I picked interest groups, and am currently up to my eyes in articles from the last 10 years analyzing all manner of particulars of interest group activity, influence, behavior, etc. It sounds dreadful, I’m sure, but I have been in a small minority of students doing this assignment who sees tremendous value in the process. We are becoming intimately familiar with the literature in a particular area, which is essentially what being an academic is all about. And, bonus! — we don’t have to come up with any original research for this class. Considering I have two other classes with two other original research papers due Dec. 1, well, I’m happy not to have to come up with another brilliant idea in the span of a single semester.
So now, let me tell you the downside: I am never brief, and because the assigning prof has been very clear that this project is more for our benefit than for a measley grade, I am trying to make the end result as potentially useful as possible. For that reason, I am less than halfway done (and it’s due Tuesday!), yet I am hovering around 45 pages single-spaced and roughly 19,000 words. I checked this morning, and my master’s thesis was a little over 30,000 words. GEEZ!!! Also, the damned thesis took me eight or nine months to get around to writing. I will have written 75% or more of this current paper in less than a week’s time when it’s all done and turned in.
It’s kinda crazy. I still — even as I look crestfallen at the work ahead of me this weekend — maintain this is a very valuable exercise. Nevertheless, it is a real beast. Someone not in this class referred to it as the “million paper march.” Very true.