What a paper submission taught me

Final papers. Enough said. If the length alone does not haunt you, the paper expectations sure will. I had been poring the guidelines for a paper in my class on International health.

I gulped. It seemed like a lot of work. I had two days.

Twenty hours and minimal sleep later, I finally finished.

I felt an unexplainable but exceedingly therapeutic feeling in slowly scrolling up and down the finished document. I had made this final paper. I was proud of every table, every figure, every word, and certainly every painstaking citation. I was eagerly waiting to hit the submit button.

Then, I paused. It is said there are only two ultimate truths—birth and death. I wondered that when my end does come, my life will, oddly enough, seem like one of these final papers. I will have looked into different sources with the goal of getting just the right information. I will feel I had too little time in which I tried to squeeze a lot. I will remember the times I had to tamper with the margins of my beliefs to make everything fit. But at the end, when it is time, will I feel the same exhilaration when I look back through all the memories in the different chapters of my life? And will I be proud and ready to submit what I made into an ultimate product over all my years?