So I'm in the middle of this big take-home final, and I'm supposed to have a word count for each part (there are 10 different parts, which actually makes it easier, but I digress). In French, you put a space on either side of a quotation mark, a semicolon, a colon, a question mark, and an exclamation point, so my automatic word count is counting each of those as one word. It's also counting page citations and [...] as words. Normally this would be good, cause it means free words with less content. But I have a max word limit imposed on each part, and I'm having trouble staying under the limit while still building a strong case. I have to go through and count each word by hand. French is full of little words that have only a few letters, so it's a pain in the ass to count those. The one good thing is that French words contract fairly often, so that means I get two words for the price of one.

This take-home final is due today. I hope I can get it done. 12.5 hours left...

UPDATE: I'm done. I did a shitty job, and I'll probably get a C, but I'm done. I can breathe. I can eat. I can do stuff without feeling guilty that I'm not spending every second on that soul-crushing paper. Talia and I are going to have a much-needed celebration.