muse-ing

My computer died last year.

It was a tragic affair heavy laden with unfortunate events, the help of dear friends, spilled cake, movies, three hard drives, and a new operating system. My brave little laptop met its end just as my undergraduate career wrapped up, thank heavens! There was no last minute scrambling to rewrite papers, find lost research, or any such chaos. I just lost everything and have mourned it ever since.

Due to this, I have been spending the past week working on transcribing my final paper at BYU to be reused as my writing sample for my OSU application. I love this paper, really I do. It's written with the best I have. It encompasses my passions neatly and makes me sound a great deal more intelligent and well-rounded than I feel I am in reality. This paper, it's called Språk: A look at language usage in the European Union, may be reused time and time again. I have been collecting more research for it over the past year and have plans to add on to it, potentially even use it for the basis for my graduate thesis.

My problem? I want to add on to it now as I prepare to send it in. Why is this a problem? Well, while I have been collecting research, I don't have access to all of the resources I need right now to cite my findings properly without all of my musing coming across as totally speculative. That, and I'm afraid of losing more time in this process. I need to get this application in, the sooner, the better. I still have to rework my resume, write my personal statement (AHHH!!), take the GRE (AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!), move, not freak out. That's a lot to handle! I just don't know if adding on to my already fantastic -I'm not biased, what are you talking about?- paper would be prudent right now. Then again, this is also coming from the girl who keeps passing up getting work done for the sake of a new book.