Open Buddha

My brain is melting.

Maybe I've become the opposite of most students. I have two papers due by
February 11, one for each of my classes. They are 25% or 30% of my grade
depending on the paper.

The one that is 25% is a 3 to 5 (yes, 3 to 5) page paper. I finally read
through my style manual the other day and found out that everything is
double-spaced. My reaction is "WTF?! I can pull three pages out of my ass. I
write e-mail longer than that."

The real problem became clear this evening when I spent about three hours on
the paper (maybe 2 1/2, hard to say). There are introductions to six sections,
we're being asked to:

In this assignment, you are being asked to show some rudimentary
understanding of the following issues/problems: freedom/determinism, God and
religion, morality and society, state and society, mind and body, and
knowledge and science. In this assignment, you are not expected to discuss
the issues or comment on any of the reading selections; your goal in writing
these brief descriptions of the problems surrounding the various issues is
to show that you understand what the issues and problems are. In your essay,
try to articulate the questions that provoke controversy. You should draw on
your reading of Nagel, as well as from the introductions in Burr/Goldinger.

Each of the issues/problems is one of the six sections. We were assigned the
introductions, not the actual papers, in each section, and the Nagel book, which
is really supplemental to this.

I've finished my writing for the first three sections, which is half of the
topics. The paper is four pages long (including the required header at the
beginning). I've been told by at least one of my profs that a page either way is
acceptable but going beyond that shows a lack of rigor. So, if I write the rest
of the paper like I've done it so far, it will be about eight or so page long.
Ooops.

So, obviously, I'm doing overkill in some ways. It was worse before. I
tightened up a bunch of my more redundant, flowery phrasing that I normally use
to more concise prose. That reduced it to four pages from five. :-)

The fear, of course, if that I'll really strip it down and then get penalized
for not covering something well enough. I have a "Am I getting this write"
e-mail to the prof so I'm sure that I'll hear something.

Once this one is done, my history paper is seven pages. I've got a week and a
half and I can turn it in by e-mail so I should be good. I want to get most of
this stuff finished by the weekend.