The Fetus Ate My Homework

It's 7:30 AM. I've been up since 3 AM due to this cold/virus/miserableness. I want nothing more than to veg out on the couch all day, drinking fluids, watching TV or movies, and napping as I'm able. Instead, I will be scrambling to complete two final papers that are due tomorrow before starting a final project and studying for a final exam. Yes, I could have started these papers quite a while ago. I didn't have to wait until the day before they were due. However, the fetus ate my homework.

How much of this is an excuse and how much of this is truth? I fell way behind this semester because I was so exhausted and sick for the first few weeks of pregnancy. I finally started to feel better shortly after midterms, but the damage had been done, both to my workload and to my motivation. I had already accepted that my grades would probably slip this term. That 4.0 of the fall semester was just not destined to be repeated. And when the BOM or whoever asked me about this discrepancy in grades, I would have a perfectly understandable explanation: I was pregnant that semester. And they would nod their heads with understanding and sympathy and not hold my lack-luster grades against me. After all, it's not like I'm expecting C's or something; I'm just choosing to be content with B's because I don't want to do any real work. And that's where the excuse part comes in. It's not that I'm not capable; it's that I don't want to. Granted, there were days in early pregnancy when I really couldn't read the hundreds of pages assigned for the next day's class. But there were also times when my body wasn't preventing me from doing work but my mind, my lack of motivation, my shifted priorities. Because if I can put in minimal effort and still get B's, why knock myself out when I may never make it back to school?

Therein lies the second issue. Even though I've denied the very suggestion that I wouldn't finish my degree because of having a baby, I know that it's a very real possibility. Because it's not like I'm in college still and contemplating not finishing my BA. And if it's possible that I won't finish my degree, why should I waste this time I could be just enjoying being pregnant by spending all of my time reading, researching, and writing? Why worry about getting good grades when it's not going to matter?

And yet I'm too proud to completely slack off. I still need to complete all the graded assignments and do a decent job with them. And if I have procrastinated so much that I would really have to push myself to get them done? Well, here comes that homework-eating fetus, again. That's right, I requested and received an extension on a paper this term on the basis of being pregnant. And, while students are granted extensions all the time for much worse reasons and there really was truth to my request, I feel ashamed, as if I am exploiting my child.

So here I am. Two papers due tomorrow (those are the actual deadlines, at least, not extensions). One worth 50% of my grade. I'm tired. I'm sick. And I'm going to churn out these papers as quickly as possible, focusing more on getting them over with than on doing them well. And when I get my final grades back, I won't blame my procrastination. I won't blame my laziness. I won't blame my lack of motivation. Instead, I'll tell myself that my grades for this term don't matter. Why? Because I was occupied with more important things. Like growing my homework-eating fetus.