It's like riding a unicycle over a dental floss tight rope over a wilderness of razor blades

I emailed my prof over the weekend about a paper I was writing. I had picked a topic but I was having trouble relating it directly to the course content, even though in my mind I could see how the two were sort of related.

He made my day on Tuesday when he sent me a list of authors and theories that I should use. That is, until I started actually researching and found out that nothing even remotely similar to my topic has ever really been done, at least not that I can find. You go into your first year of university wanting to distinguish yourself and go where no one has ever gone before, creating new theories and crap and getting those A+ grades that are reserved for the exceptional few by being creative and stomping on virgin ground and then when the time comes to write papers and things, you can't find any possible way to say things that haven't already been said.

Multiple times.

And so you lower your standards and go for those A- grades because that's respectable too and you don't actually have to come up with anything new, and life is good. Besides, groundbreaking theses are for grad school.

And now you find yourself stuck in a position where your prof is quite enthusiastic about your topic and has obviously taken a decent amount of time to try and help you out, and this is the third class you've taken with him so he kind of knows you and you lack the imagination to come up with a different topic in the next five days. I would be very grateful for more time and a hundred more pages.

So, what to do? Ignore the stack of books you brought home from the library, of course. For the first time in weeks, the television turned on and I sat there through Survivor and Deal or No Deal, eating potato chips and knitting. I never do this. Ever. I feel like such a slob.