History!

My history paper's done, finally!!! I handed it in this morning.

It was actually a bit of an ordeal to get it all done. My original idea was to write about how the central aspects of Christian worship - Holy Communion and Preaching - changed from the Early Church to the Reformation.

I went to see my professor about it, and her respone was luke-warm. I really like her - she's very kind, humble and gentle, yet brilliantly smart - yet somehow her response deflated me. She suggested I take my research in a different direction. She didn't want me to just drop down facts on a paper. She didn't want a survey of Christian history. She wanted me to make a statement, a thesis.

So I did a ton of extra research, based on her suggestions. Yet, I didn't want to give up on all my ideas either, so I ended up blending both, and I'm not sure that was such a good idea.

In the end, a paper that was supposed to be 3,000 words turned out to be close to 6,000!! I edited it 3 times, and deleted over 1,000 words. My final copy had 4,100 words, still much over the accepted limit. But I decided to hand it in anyways. Editing is such hard work, and I'd already spent so much time on it, that cutting out even more felt like cutting out the very core of me, since I'd put so much work into it.

Anyways, it's done. My history paper's history.