These long-form, open-ended essays, like the one I'm currently struggling to write, are the most excruciating assignments imaginable. "Say something interesting about the themes of the course" becomes very hard when you don't really have anything interesting to say. One of the things I like about law school is that the problems in law come ready-made, and you can focus on dealing with them. Somebody screwed up, and they need real answers. Writing without that kind of purpose comes out scatter-brained and unfocused, and I go half mad trying to corral enough garbage to fill fifteen pages into any kind of coherence in my head. And of course it's grindingly depressing to struggle at something you know is fundamentally useless.
Worst of all, they seem to get harder to write every time, even controlling for length and subject matter complexity. Extrapolating from current trends, I figure I have maybe two or three good academic papers left in me lifetime. The way costs are trending, by the time I wring that last paper out of a battered laptop, I'll emerge from weeks of solitude broken and crumpled, babbling nonsense fragments before collapsing in a wretched heap upon the floor. So look for that to happen around June.
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