Adobe is a Girl's Best Friend

Screw diamonds.

I've found a new and better friend-

- the humble PDF file.

I love PDFs. I love all form of digitised academia. I love Adobe Acrobat Reader, and the sexy way it flows off the tongue. I love the sensual scrolling motion as I roll the mouse button down to find the information that will save my skin.

In short, I love the fact that it has just made up for all my research shortfalls.

You see, I am the bastard child of two faculties. I'm half Law, half Arts, and unfortunately, I seem to have taken on the Arts mentality of "Essay? What essay?"

(If I had taken of the characteristics of my other parent faculty, I would probably be hunched up in the law library with a stack of secondary references cradled protectively under one arm, hissing competitively at any other law students that would dare to come within snatching range of my precious precious 3-hour-reserve texts on Critical Legal Theory.)

However, I am an Arts student. And we don't...actually...do anything.

Oh, we sit and we debate, and we drink coffee at Wholefoods and occasionally wake up before 11 a.m to sneak into a lecture, but we don't really do much else. Besides sleep. And whine about the 'workload' which consists of two contact hours a week per subject.

Anyhow, I really should have considered the logistics of starting this 2500 word essay (worth 50% of the total mark). In constrasting the dichotomy of suburbia and the inner city in Australian fiction, I should really have considered the fact that I might need secondary references. You know, for that funny thing at the end of the essay called a Bibliography.

I probably shouldn't have left it until tonight, too.

Tomorrow, the library is open at 2:00-5:00 p.m. Instead of frantically chasing down references, I am going to be stuck at work from 10 a.m- 5:00 p.m, listening to another customer complain about how I should be taking responsibility for their own stupidity (I have a suggestion to the stupid moron who flung abuse at me the other day- if you LOSE your specialised charger for your Navman handheld, there is no point throwing a tantrum about it and being generally insulting because we don't stock the manufacturer-order-only-item on our shelves. If you dare come back in and shout about 'shocking customer service' I shall knock you out with a 24V cordless drill, truss you up in the back room and make you watch "Rick Stein's French Odyssey" for ten hours on our crappy 34cm television.)

Ahem...back to the essay....

...so I was having a panicky fit, looking at this list of recommended reading that I had largely ignored up to Week Eight, going "AAAAAAAARGGGGGGGHHHHHH", as is my wont (I'm often wondered what it must be like sharing a house with me.)

...and then I searched the university catalogue. And found that half of these blessed texts have been converted into PDF form as an ONLINE RESOURCE.

Huzzah!

I could kiss the person who developed PDFs. I could also kiss the person who kindly uploaded all of those texts to the library catalogue. In fact, I think the whole world needs a hug right now.

Essay is due Monday. I still have one more night (una noche, according to 98 Degrees) and so it shall be a sleepless essay extravaganza in which the words "dichotomy", "suburbia" and "stagnant" shall be overused to the nth degree.

It's gonna be a long night, Bubbles.