Complicity in Murphy's Law

Some days it simply does not pay to get out of bed. Today came very close to being one of those days. As my academic career progresses, I have come to a very unsettling realization. I am a procrastinator. I’m not suggesting that realization is particularly unsettling, because, face it, what student at any level of education doesn’t put off working on those big assignments? I have realized, though, that the way I dealt with assignments in college cannot continue to be the way I deal with assignments in law school.

I am currently enrolled in a class on Health Care Law. On the first day of the class, the professor informed us that we would either be able to take a final in the class (a take home test that he would make really long and difficult, too) or he would let us write a paper. The paper was to be well-researched on an area of Health Law of our choosing, and should be about 20 pages long. Being the lazy guy that I am, I did what I did as un undergraduate with assignments like that: absolutely nothing. The paper was due today at 4:00 pm, but I did nothing on the paper whatsoever until last night.

Actually, I’m not sure whether I can count doing anything last night, really. My only action with regard to the paper was to set my alarm clock for 4:00 am this morning so that I could get up and write the paper.

Today, however, I was a living testament to Murphy’s Law. When I woke up this morning, I glanced at my clock. It registered as being 10:30 in the morning. Off to a great start... Nothing like oversleeping your alarm by 6.5 hours. In my mad rush to get around in my darkened room and get to my computer so that I could start writing, I accidentally stepped on (and broke) my electronic weight scale. I know that it broke because I put my weight on the screen part instead of the pads where you are supposed to put your feet, but the painful irony of breaking my scale when I stepped on it was not lost on me.

I sat down to write at my computer, only to realize that I had, in the intervening 4 months or so, failed to decide on a paper topic. So after 30 minutes of brainstorming, I finally selected a topic I knew a little about already and which incorporated enough philosophical background for me to be able to simply write for a few pages without having to do any strenuous research.

Well, I finally finished my paper at 3:00. When driving to school, I normally leave 30 minutes before I need to be there (20 minutes driving time with a 10 minute grace period), so I set the paper to print and ran upstairs to take a shower. When I came back down, much to my horror, I discovered that my computer had spontaneously restarted itself while I was gone. That WordPerfect wasn’t open failed to terrify me until I realized that I had, in my mad orgy of writing failed to save my document even once. 3:25.

With the blood pounding in my ears, I opened WordPerfect. I quickly thanked whatever gods might be watching out for me. WordPerfect had made an auto-backup right before I’d hit ‘print’ and so my document wasn’t lost. I told the document to print again, this time on ‘Draft Quality’ because my time was running short. I ran upstairs to put some laundry in the dryer, and when I came back down, I was happy to note that the paper had printed in its entirety.

The ink cartridge, however, had run out after only 3 pages.

Using a personally rarely-used technique, I highlighted all of the text in the document and changed the text color to a very dark blue and re-printed in color. When the document finished printing, it was 3:40, and I was 10 minutes later than I wanted to be.

I took the document, hopped in my car, and raced off down the highway toward Topeka. I was making good time (read: I was speeding like a maniacal hellion) until I hit the city streets of Topeka. Wouldn’t you know it, I immediately ran into a car accident in the middle of the road on which I was traveling. 3:51. Ambulances, police cruisers... The works.

Complete standstill.

Police officers were directing traffic around the accident. Cursing like a sailor who’s been denied shore leave, I took the detour. When I finally got moving again, it was 3:56. According to my watch, when I handed the paper in, I had 23 seconds remaining.

I felt good that the fiasco was finally over, until I realized that it was MY actions that led me to the madhouse rush all day long, and that I could have averted the entire near-disaster if I’d been more on top of my assignment over the course of the semester.

The upsetting realization about my procrastination, the one that caught me mid-stride and to which I referred earlier, was the realization that the person who caused the accident over which I’d swore to high heaven... The person who made me late while I drove like a madman toward the school... The person who had caused injuries, perhaps to themselves, perhaps to other people... But by the grace of god, that person might have been someone just like me.