Heart attack city

I've just been dealing with a minor panic situation. In fact, it's not just, and it's not minor. Not in my scheme of things at any rate. See, I woke up this morning to find an email waiting for me from my thesis advisor, basically demanding an update on my progress, the submission in draft form of a chunk of writing, and giving me a general kick up the bum. Now I'm a lazy student, yes. I tend to wait until the pressure of the deadline is so intense that I will submit the first draft I have at around the word count that makes vague sense and passes the spell check. How I've made it through so many years of university study with only one call up before the unsatisfactory progress committee is a mystery so deep it almost needs its own university study to fathom it. But I've never, ever, managed to totally wipe off my radar a 16,000 word submission. Nor have I ever thought that there was no chance I would get through everything with over a month to go. That overwhelming feeling of imminent failure, which I use as the spur when I'm pulling all-nighters, generally strikes in the last two weeks of semester. This was the first time it's ever hit me in September.

So, quaking in my boots, I dug out everything I have so far on my thesis. It's a small collection of notes hauled together last semester while working on other assignments. In no way could it be stretched to the point where it could constitute a thesis. If I needed a fire to survive and this was all the paper I had to make it, it would barely outlast the match. I'd be dead from whatever dire situation was needing me to make a fire - the stress of today has taken away my ability to think up meaningful metaphors. Because at intervals today, I was having panic attacks, diving into my bag and pulling out something in an attempt to structure an argument, a thought, anything that could save me. And I was coming up with nothing.

Thank god for email, though. Because while I was sitting playing with finding a hotel for my New York Christmas trip (as a side note, the price of hotels in New York is truly extortionate, especially when the trip is going to include New Years Eve), an email came through from the lovely thesis advisor, offering to grant me an extension. That was fine, I could deal with an extension, but I hadn't been aware that I would even need one, so I fired back a response straight away in the hopes of being able to sort out what the hell was going on, and how our wires had been so drastically crossed.

A few explanations later, and it seems that she made a mistake. I can breathe again, at last. Even more important, I should be able to sleep tonight without guilt overtaking me. I can do all the tasks I've set for myself before the trip home (if nothing else, I can finish the bag that I started ages ago with a view to being able to safely carry this laptop, given that it's bigger than almost every other bag I both own and am allowed to carry onto a plane...). Now all I have to do is clear my bed of the small pile of paper, the 2 laptops (notes on the old one that haven't been touched since they were put there) and the monstrous mountain of novels that I'm writing about. Then I can work on getting my heart rate and adrenaline levels back to normal. So about three hours of sleep tonight then. I'm going to be so productive at work tomorrow, clearly. Again.