You might have been asking yourself why your junior friend has been crying in the library the past few weeks. It’s not because they read a really moving poetry book but instead because they were drowning in the stress of a major school assignment.

The ‘Golden Lines’ staff pulled back the curtain of the emotional journey that is the iconic US History research paper, where many St. Pius X juniors intensively pull together a project–that’s supposed to be done over the span of a month–in only one night. Below is a series of interviews from students telling us about their experiences while writing their papers.