The term paper was a critical comparison of Locke and Descartes on the nature and existence of external bodies. Submitted at 11:54.

I think the debate comes down to whether or not we try to make sense of things with or without relying on our senses. I argued that even though cold water feels hot when my hands are frozen and food tastes odd when I’m sick, I’m still going to have to trust my senses, because the alternative is troubling.

I think that paper might have been one of the neatest things I’ve ever thrown together in a hurry.

I also think it was a mediocre piece of work from an undergraduate who couldn’t keep up with the reading and barely understood the assignment.

It might have been both at the same time.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that pretty soon I’ll be looking back over my shoulder and I’ll be thirty-three and I won’t remember hardly anything about this assignment or this class or this semester or this year or all of these years of my life. But somehow, I’ll have managed to plow through some more time.

Maybe there will be things that I’ve figured out by then that are still beyond me, right now. I don’t know what it’s going to cost me. I expect that it’s going to be painfully embarrassing and uncomfortable most of the time, and that trying keep myself together is going to feel like trying to hold up the sky.

This is not the first time that it’s been almost the end of a spring semester and I’ve felt scorched and overwhelmed and a little bit lonely and sad. This is not the first time I’ve walked down a sidewalk past the daffodils with earbuds in my ears, found a spot to park the Jeep by a lake, stocked up on snacks from a gas station convenience store, and written a goddamn paper in a hurry.

This is not the first time. I have gone through this before.