As I sit here and write up a report for work, I have had a flashback to the time in first year Psychology when I had a small (1000 word) essay worth 5% of my class mark due. I cannot recall the topic.

As usual my general hatred of deadlines shone through nicely, and I failed to set aside any time to work on the essay prior to the night before. When the time came to sit down and write it, I simply slapped a large amount of nonsense on the PC screen while continually hitting the ‘word count’ button to monitor my progress. There was no structure to the essay nor did it have a coherent theme.

What I did do, however, was make liberal use of the thesaurus funciton on the word processor. Ordinary words such as ’sad’ were instantly transposed into exciting adjectives such as ‘morose’. No new word was ever used twice.

Feeling satisfied that I had accomplished a ‘B-’ essay and wanting a sandwich I printed the composition off and called it a night. I asked a fellow classmate to submit it the next day while I worked on another impending assignment for Chemistry class.

I thought nothing about it further, until the next week when the professor asked ‘Is Jacob Sanford here today?’ at the end of a lecture. I confirmed, and was asked to stay after class.

Being singled out in a class of 300+ is certainly a worrysome prospect - I figured the jig was up and she had noticed my essay being passed in by another student. ‘No big deal’, I thought, ‘express my apologies and get out asap’.

After the class had emptied, the following dialogue occured:

Professor:
‘Jacob, I asked you to stay due to the essay you wrote last week’.

Our Hero:
‘Yes’

Professor:
‘Jacob, I marked the essay and it was very well done. So well done in fact that I have my suspicions that it wasn’t your work - it certainly is NOT at the level of writing of a first year student. I searched on the internet for some phrases you used but nothing came up’.

Our Hero:
‘…..’

Professor:
‘Did you write the essay yourself? Did you plagarize from any sources? If you did, please admit it and you have my word that I’ll let you off with a warning.. This time.’

Our Hero:
‘I did not. I threw it together the night before.’

Professor:
‘Oh.. Have you ever considered furthering your studies in psychology?’

Our Hero:
‘ Not really, I want to apply to med school next year (This was true at the time… very disturbing)’

Professor:
‘That’s a great career. Well thanks, I just wanted to talk to you about the essay.’

She then handed me the essay with an ‘A+?’ on it. To quote the late doctor - The question mark was emphasized.

I will never understand what strange powers must have come together that night I crammed those words into an ‘essay’, since my writing is poor and my diction is generally even worse. I would like to think that the thesaurus had something to do with it, although further attempts via that method were met with failure.. and deservedly so.

It’s hard to believe I can recall that story but cannot remember how I got to work today.