night ramblings- for a grade!

For extra points, identify the vocabulary words!

Despite the knowledge that, at this point, sleep was futile, Emily launched into the project with great zeal. She was a scrupulous, almost perfectionist type of girl, and she knew it was inevitable that she would give up a night of sleep to make her project amazing. Emily was careful to maintain the delicate balance between silly and didactic in her work.
As her thoughts turned to mere digression as her brain gradually devolved to the consistency of lightly mashed potatoes, Emily tried in vain to ameliorate the situation. She was loath to desecrate her time by wasting it, and it was not dubious that she would accomplish anything profound in the next hour. As her friends texted her to check up on her progress, she remained reticent, preferring to keep everything a secret until the reveal the next day. In her own eccentric way, Emily, like many other people, enjoyed being the center of attention every once in a while. She allowed her thoughts to wander to the obscure corners of her mind where dreams were kept, imagining the adulation she would receive as the winner of the national competition.
She shook her head, ending her brief respite. Now was crunch time. She was painfully aware of the paucity of glue sticks in her house, and she knew that any tiny mistake she made now would be extrapolated out over the number of people who would be looking at it. Emily worked harder, pausing to get out a new stick of mint gum. The old piece had become insipid with the length of her time spent chewing it. She had laid her hands on anything mint after hearing about its brain stimulating effects, disparaging the use of virulent caffeine supplements, which could damage her body in the long run.
Emily wondered why Americans were so fixated on time that they “spent” it instead of “passing” it like Spanish speakers. These days, it seemed like everyone was parsimonious with everything, including time. She acquiesced that her time was valuable, and that time was ephemeral as a dragonfly’s wing, and she thought to herself, “The only valuable thing I possess is my time.”