The Mozart Process begins anew.

I have a four-page paper due in Core Humanities on Tuesday. I haven't put a word to print or screen regarding it thus far. I have no intention of so doing until I'm sitting in "my office" on campus tomorrow afternoon after accounting class, which for those keeping score at home would be about 21 hours before the paper is due. I have no doubt in my mind I'll get an A.

See, I may not have put pen to page or keyboard to word processor, but the paper is completely written in my head. It is a take on Candide that casts Dr. Pangloss as a modern motivational speaker, the Tony Robbins or Dr. Phil of his time. You probably don't need me to tell you what the assignment says based on that little blurb, but here it is:

"Take any piece of literature post-1700 that we have covered in class. What is its historical context? What relevance does it have to the modern reader? And how did you personally interpret the author's message as a 21st-century student?"

We've already had an assignment like this. The first paper way back in September was this assignment, but the subject material was any piece from the 16th and 17th centuries. I wrote on Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, shamelessly cribbed from last semester's piece I wrote on Aristotle, and lamented the vulgarization of 21st-century culture by crap like Internet memes (ed: I iz soree SpaceCadet cat!), Oprah, and radical individualism...and cruised to an A. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In other news, my Nutrition teacher gave us 5 points of extra credit for showing up on the day before Thanksgiving. In her words, "I know most of you had your other classes canceled today and it would've been easy for you to just say 'I'm not coming to class at 9:30 in the morning.' For you, I give a reward." What was it Chris Rock said about wanting a reward for doing something you're supposed to do? Eh...not that I'm complaining. It means that I need at least a 3 (out of 120) on the final exam to get an A in the class. I don't know how one would go about doing worse than that. I'd probably get three points just trying to fail the true-false section of the test since on average I lose about five points trying to get them right!

Between tonight's homework (I have assignments in all five of my classes), Wednesday's job interview, and Thursday's first final exam...this week will be stressful but satisfying. Still got to finish strong---I'm like the '07 Patriots at this point, don't want to lose the Super Bowl.