Okay, baseball talk will officially cease until next season. Thanks for putting up with me. We shall now return to our regular programming, here on the Academic Neuroses channel. Why? Because I made the mistake of looking at my calendar last night before I headed up to bed. Did you know the conference at which I�m supposed to give a paper is less than three weeks away? Well, neither did I. Have I written the paper yet? Of course not.

I have been entirely too blas� about this one, as it is based on a paper I delivered three times last year. The whole idea behind my paper submissions this year was that I wouldn�t have to do any work. The problem is, I�m not actually very good at that. The other problem is that this paper has always suffered from an identity crisis. As my advisor pointed out, it will make a good article when I get around to it �after your dissertation,� he said with mock sternness. But I can�t seem to decide whether I�m talking about the film I�m discussing or I�m talking about my analytical method. Problem number three, of course, is that an analytical paper would be a lot stronger, particularly for the type of conference I�ll be speaking at this time. But, of course, it would be a lot easier to do the other thing. So my perfectionist tendencies are wrestling with my lazy ass and I�m not sure who�s winning. I�m also not sure I can think about the ramifications of that particular metaphor anymore. Time for a new paragraph!

Of course, one might point out that none of this would be a problem if I had say, started the paper a month ago. But then, one might get a punch in the nose.

The other thing that�s making me tear out my hair is that my advisor offered some suggestions for the problem that weren�t as useful as they sounded at the time he mentioned them. Actually, I�m sure it�s not his fault. It has more to do with our advisor/advisee dynamic. When I get comments on things like this, I�m so incredibly grateful that I don�t think about them very carefully until later, at which point I frequently realize that I�m really not sure what he was getting at, by which point I�m usually too embarrassed to ask for a point of clarification [Ack! A reference to Robert�s Rules! Clearly with all this thinking about conferences my Model U.N. past is coming back to haunt me.]

But clearly writing about my angst here is not getting the paper written. Time to grit my teeth and smile.

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