2005-03-23 - 6:41 p.m.

Dr Housefield makes me crazy

Ah, yes... good ol' Dr Housefield... when his waves of anality crash against the gleaming shores of Lake Rladyofpunk, I become so crippled with fear I am unable to get anything done. Want an example?
Here goes: I'm working on a paper due tomorrow in his class. The guidelines for said paper inculde the following:
"...must be typed, 12 point, Times or Helvetica font, double-spaced. Different fonts or spacing will NOT be graded and must be re-submitted before 3/29."
And the thing is, I know he's not joking. He really won't accept anything else. Oh, and if you do re-submit it, you'll be docked 20 points anyway. Yup, you can go from an A to a C just for using the wrong font. It's not like we're talking about someone writing in 16 point Wingdings either. I once had a paper rejected because it was in 11 point New York. It looked just like Times to me, but nooooo, Dr Housefield knows the difference. And now I remember the time I got a D on an otherwise flawless paper because I messed up the header.
From these experiences I've learned to always use the right font and the right header, but that's the thing... no matter what I do correctly, it'll never be good enough for him. I can write the most brilliant analysis of the works oof Duchamp and yet he'll give me a lousy grade because I have weird margins or my printer ink is too dark or (insert neurotic, paranoid thought here).
So now that I've remembered all of this, I'm frozen. I was ready to write my paper half an hour ago... hell, I was even excited to get it finished, but now with every key I press I worry that I'm doing the thing that will inexplicably screw me over. Maybe my indents are wrong. Maybe I misspelled an artist's name once back in paragraph eight and missed it. I know that in his anal-retentive world these things are grounds for death.
So now I can't do anything.
I'm too scared to write.
What's the logical solution to this problem?
Simple: go get another glass of wine. This will calm me down, and I don't even have to worry about my paper being incoherent! After taking this professor twice I've figured out I don't have to know anything about art history to get a good grade in his class. All I have to know is how to follow his rules. I could transcribe the lyrics of the song I'm listening to right now (and since it's goth music it really makes no sense) and so long as I spaced it right and used the right header I'd get an A.
Lame

The last thing I wrote before this thing. The next thing I wrote after this.