Daily Newsie

My research papers are never as long as they’re supposed to be, simply because it doesn’t take me 25 pages to say what I need to say about a particular topic. Some of my professors are cool with that — they don’t want to read 25 pages of babbling to reach a page quota any more than I want to write it — but I have a feeling my Family Communication professor won’t dig the fact that my “no more than 25″-page paper is more like … 16. A solid 16, but still. That includes cover page and bibliography, which he explicitly said do not count toward the final page tally.

The thing is, I’m completely tapped out. I’ve written all I can think of to write on the topic of family communication and cancer. I have something like 18 sources, which is exactly the right amount, and I still can’t come up with anything else to write. So do I make a big push tomorrow to meet 25 pages (or at least 20), or do I hand it in as is and trust that he knows a concisely-written paper when he sees one? He said no more than 25 pages, but does that mean 16 is OK? I have a comfortable mid-90s grade in Family Comm, but that doesn’t mean I want to risk it by turning in a too-short paper.

All this talk of page guidelines kills me. I came from a profession that valued brevity and now I’m supposed to barf up two dozen pages on apologia/cancer/organizational disengagement (three different classes, thank God). I suppose in the morning I could read a few more articles and sprinkle them in there, but really … do I want to sacrifice quality for quantity?