duck-shaped pain

Anyway, it didn't turn out to be quite the paper I thought it was. I accumulated so much information that I couldn't fit it all in my paper. Which is better than the opposite, I guess. But it also meant that I had to abandon my original plans halfway through writing it, and at the end, I felt a total sense of lack emanating from the thing. There were plenty of places where I thought things were missing, and that there were lots of questions left unanswered. But I turned it in anyway, since it was due shortly after I finished it.

Doom, though, has been in the back of my mind. It was my first real attempt at writing a history paper, a big thing for me since I am a history major, after all. So it felt like a test to me, something to prove that I was really up to this.

I still have a few days before I get the thing back. But my mood of gloom has changed to one of puzzlement.

Today, I was sitting outside after finishing my very easy Spanish final, relaxing and waiting for my next class to begin. I was just minding my own business when one of the other history professors -- not one I have this semester, one that I only barely know -- came up to me.

"I heard about your vegetarian paper," she said. "I'd really like to read it after you get it back."

I must have looked totally baffled or something, so she continued. "Yeah, it's been all over the history department."

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? She seemed pretty excited about it, and I was a bit too surprised to ask further, so I just stammered out a thank you and she went on her merry way.

Now I'm even more curious to get the thing back.

[1] There's a stronger tradition of vegetarianism there, apparently, and there is more of an organized movement over there than there is here. Also, Americans in the 1970s ate more beef than anyone on the planet ever, and vegetarianism at that time was totally a reaction to beef. The specific anti-beef slant to American vegetarianism at the time, plus its lack of organizational structure, is what distinguishes it, which is why this book was useless to me for this paper.

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