If

With less than 24 hours left before another essay is due in, I have decided to post a poem that I wrote a couple of months ago. I wrote it the day before a big essay was due in. Luckily tomorrows essay is not as big and important, so I am not feeling quite as desperate......... (hopefully you know the original)

If
(with sincere apologies to Mr. Kipling)

If you can keep your head when all around you
Are papers, books and half-drunk cups of tea
If you can trust yourself when doubt enfolds you,
That your argument is contradictory.

If an “outing” is a visit to the kitchen
If a “treat”s a game of online solitaire.
If you fail to recognize you in the mirror
As your red and bleary eyes look back and stare.

If you can stay awake and not be tired,
Or, being tired, don't give in to sleep,
Or, being awake, don't give way to hating,
And yet withstand the temptation to weep;

If you can quote - and not make these your master;
If you can think - and make those thoughts your own;
If you can turn to friends when in disaster
And waste a half an hour on the phone;

If you can make one heap of all the theories
And throw in a few of them - just for show,
And grapple with “reductionist” and “localism”
And decide on whether or not to quote Foucault;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To keep your sanity when reality is gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can bear to read the words you've written
And check the spelling, et al’s and ibid
Put your student number on the top right corner
And remember – omit your name or God forbid!

If you can fill the last possible minute
With sixty seconds' more of your conclusion -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And you’ll have handed in your essay - my son/daughter! (gender emphasis added)