I have to stop procrastinating.

Sometimes, when I stay up really late writing papers that I should have done weeks ago, I suddenly realize that I've been unconsciously inserting words and phrases in other languages because they are longer and take up more room. Just now was the fourth time I've caught myself trying to slip "rappresentazione" into my dramaturgy paper, which has sixteen letters, as opposed to "play," with its measly four. Now what used to be a eleven-page paper has been agonizingly reduced to a sorry nine, and I'm pretty sure some of the replacements I used to cover those blunders aren't actually English cognates of the French and Italian words like I think they are, and therefore those will eventually have to go, too. I'm gonna be in trouble when I finally do move to California and start using my Spanish again -- although I can't imagine trying to summon that part of my brain again under the rest of this mess. At this hour, I don't even remember where I put it.


I liken this trouble I have (writing papers alarmingly close to their deadlines) to playing Scrabble. Sean gets mad when I won't let him have "Ent" (as in the fictional, however awe-inspiring race of trees on Middle Earth), but he won't give me "beaux," and clearly that gets a nod in Harry Potter. You can't acknowledge one fantasy series and completely disregard the next! He also says that even if I were to somehow cheat and have enough tiles to spell it, he will never give me points for "Agamemnomonic." Which, as pretty much everyone knows, means "using mythological Greek heroes as a memory aid." I see no problem with that. Just like I should be allowed to find some way to use "deinstitutionalization" and "counterrevolutionaries" in this paper, since they are the two longest words I can think of that are not completely ridiculous (twenty-two letters each).


The play I am dramaturgy-ing at the moment actually has less than nothing to do with Greeks, ancient or otherwise. I did, however, just learn the word "Hellenologophobia," which has seventeen letters and means "Fear of Greek terms or complex scientific terminology." It's a crying shame that more professors don't award points for creativity, because I would have this Magna Cum Laude thing locked. up.