--Benjamin Franklin

...and went back to the college's computer lab at around 8:30 AM, with about 75% of the paper completed. Got a properly functioning computer on the second try. Finished the thing at about 11:20 or so, but it wouldn't print, for some reason. Fifteen minutes and two computers later, I got my printout and zoomed off to my 11:00 class, arriving well past the halfway point, but handing in the paper at the end.

I'm still not sure how it turned out. There are definitely some structural errors, and it's a bit inconsistent at times, and I'm not sure I agree with my own argument, even... but it's eight-and-a-helf pages, and the assignment was to write 5-9, so I at least got the quantity right.

The next time I agree to write a paper confined to a "close reading" of the sources, focused on a technological development that didn't exist when they were writing... well, it was basically an impossible mission. Oh, well.

It turned out to be a good thing I was there, as they want to establish a network of college papers in the City University of New York system, in which member papers could reprint articles from the others, so I was present to (a) insist that they get permission from the individual writers, and (b) make it clear that I, for one, would refuse to give any such permission. As far as I'm concerned, the paper has one-time rights to my articles, but I retain all others, and I have no intention of giving them up.

In a similar vein, they're planning on putting the paper on the Web in the future, and while I'm okay with having my most recent article up there with the rest of the current issue, I absolutely withhold permission for them to be included in their archives.

And lo, the Editor in Chief was, like, "Okay, fine, whatever." And it was good.