Signs you need a lobotomy...

It has long been clear to me that I work too hard. It first made itself known during my first summer job. I worked in an Ecology lab at the University of Georgia. The professor and all of the grad students really liked me because I was so much more productive, more efficient than any of the other undergraduate slaves they'd had. I think this is largely due to my then hyper-active work ethic. For some reason, I was morally opposed to taking breaks. Even though you're required by law to have two 20 minute breaks a day! The grad students would seriously tell me I was working too hard, would try to persuade me to take a break. I never would. I don't know what was wrong with me...

The latest manifestation of this special brand of insanity has been in preparing for my paper. I've read over 350, possibly close to 400 pages of journal articles for it. And that's excluding all the pages of references at the end of each article (I slacked off a little earlier today to add it all up). I wonder if anybody else in the class is working this hard. I'd be surprised. We're supposed to have at least 8 references for our paper. I've read 25. Its possible that some people will cite more references in their paper, but if they do, I bet it's a topic they're very interested in, and they didn't read all of them in the past week.

I've tried to justify myself for working so hard... I say that I first had to do research in order to even determine what specific topic to write on. Only then could I focus my research and really get down to it. And while that's certainly true, it still leaves me with 16 relevant articles. Twice the minimum...

So what it is that's wrong with me? Why do I work so hard? Is it really a problem? Is there a cure? Hmmmm. So many questions. So little answers.