WHY POETRY AND PAPERS SOMETIMES SUCK

I'm trying to write a paper for a class.  This class has been the most disorganized and irrelevant thing I've studied since attempting to take a poetry writing class at college.  Not that writing poetry is irrelevant; but this particular professor preferred poetry about grandmothers being raped than anything actually meaningful.  Not that grandmothers being raped isn't meaningful ... See?  This is why poetry sometimes sucks.

Anyway, this paper has no directions (plural).  Oh, it has direction (singular), it's just that I have no idea how to format the thing or what is actually required because the several references to this paper throughout the course have been ephemeral, at best.

"You should all be working on your capstone paper," the instructor (I hesitate to call her a teacher) says.

Ye Mighty Oracle of Ignorance, Ye Great Cahuna of Catastrophe, on what shall we be working since we've had no explanation as to what the final paper should be?

"It'll all roll together in the end," she assures us.

What will roll together in the end? Our grades?  Our skulls?  The weed you seem to be toking?

Between the six of us taking this course, we have five different instructors, and not a one of them has been able to give us a straight answer on this capstone paper: It's one lesson; It's six lessons; It's an entire unit; We can use previous work; We can't use previous work; Quote from the readings; Don't quote from the readings; Here's a sample; Don't use the sample; Follow the forms; The state changed the forms. 

On and on and on it goes; where it stops, nobody knows.

I've spent the entire day putting together the paper to the best of my ability (it's about 1/4 of the way done), and texting back and forth with another teacher who has a different instructor and is equally confused by the opaque participants' manual.  Here's a relatively (semi-relatively) clean version of our texts.

ME:  The trail mix you made me for Christmas is totally saving my sanity through this capstone paper.

SHE:  You like it?  It's healthy, too.

ME:  Freakin' LOVE it.  I won't let anyone else eat any.  It goes equally well with beer, wine, or gin.

SHE:  Do you have the capstone rubric?  I'm using that as a guideline.

ME:  And tea.  The excellent trail mix goes with tea.  I'm not a complete fucking alcoholic.

SHE:  I am.  Embrace it.

ME:  I haven't started drinking yet.  YET.  A key word we should know in every language.  That and beer.

SHE:  This is a nightmare!  It's going to take hours!

ME:  Fuck my life.  I went out and shoveled this heavy shit (slushy ice/snow) with a bad back.  That is how much I want to get away from it.

SHE:  Just one lesson?  Mine said all six.  This is so poorly presented.  She said it should be a journey through the unit.

ME:  Shit.  I just need a 50% to pass.

SHE:  I don't even care if I'm doing this right.  I'm going to get my hair done in an hour.  Thinking I'll be almost half done by then.

ME:  (posts a picture of my papers everywhere and sharpened pencils all over the place)

SHE:  (posts a picture of her lap top)

ME:  Fuck.  I just whacked my knee sooooooooo bad.  (table leg attacked me)

SHE:  Please murder me.

ME:  If it weren't solid ice outside, I'd meet you somewhere.  I just went to get the mail and it's a skating rink.  (first winter storm and it sucked -- 4 inches of sleet instead of real snow)  We have to include the readings, too, right?

SHE:  It doesn't ask for it in the template or rubric.

ME:  THIS FUCKING COURSE SUCKS ASSHOLES.

Now that I look back on the conversation, it is a little bit poetic.  Maybe I'll just burn the paper and turn my text messages into poetry.  I could make a fortune on my text messages and IM's.  I should start a blog!  I should ... I should ... Oh, frig it.  I should write this frigging paper.  After all, it beats grandmothers being raped.