The Scary Monster Called MLA

   I cried. The lesson said " Research Supported". I know what that means. And I cried. It means I will have to document MLA style. I will need stuff. Footnotes, Endnotes, Works Cited. It isn't like I haven't watched MLA youtube videos, read examples, and the handy little Prentice Hall Reference Guide. ( See, now do I have to cite that? ) It still scares me. Research Paper, not so scary. MLA? ?Scary.
    If MLA were a disease, it would be one with festering boils and a slow painful death. What if it kills me? Well, not me, but my grade. Why can't I just pick a topic I am all sorts of educated on and cite "Me". That would be ideal, and it would be a failure. All the nifty things Word can do. I know there is even the possibility of special buttons and doodads to do foot and endnotes, which I am still not entirely convinced I understand what those are, you would think I wouldn't be so panicked. No lie, I had to ask my twelve year old for help with making a Header, after I tried for half an hour.
   I googled  "MLA for Dummies". All I found was more of the same information that was presented in a way that made my head spin. Why can I not get this?! Maybe it is just tedious. Or maybe it is just the horrible invention of smart people from long ago, for the sole purpose of weeding out scattered brained thirty-something year olds that have no business attempting to write a college level paper to highly educated individuals. MLA will be my demise.
   It would be easier if I understood the why. Why does it have to be like this. Plagiarism is naughty, very bad. I get that. Is that why there is such strict rules about the documentation of sources? Is all this turmoil because long ago there were bad guys, stealing the words of others? And MLA is the Alcatraz of my soul now. There are others, APA, CMOS, more. It is a scary world we live in.
   I have made a commitment to find a topic to research for my final essay, and not base it off how easy it will be to document and cite my sources. I really will try. What a tragedy, if my words and thoughts get muddled and stripped because I am unable to figure out how to cite or document. I am not just being lazy. And I am open for advise! Do I just write, type out all the goodies I learn, then go back and try to find out what came from where and when that was figured out by who? Or do I write and stop, add the stuff about the stuff, and then pray my train of thought didn't derail off a large embankment? Seriously, this could be the end.