Procrastinatoring

Me? Anxious? No way.

2010-08-18T09:24:00.000-07:00

For as long as I can remember, I've been the token Type A in my circle of friends and acquaintances. I know many folks have perfectionist tendencies, but when I say I'm a Type A, I mean I am quite possbily one of the most neurotic, anxious individuals you will ever meet (read: I'm awesome). This isn't something new that came with the onset of my college career; no, this started in elementary school. I was the kid who cried when she didn't get a perfect score on her spelling test (because let's be honest, how hard are those tests?) or felt a lump in her throat every time report cards were distributed. Look, I have a hard time with failure, okay?

What I'm getting at here is that school is kind of my thing. You know, some people act, some people draw, some people make ice sculptures of Al Gore. I happen to hit my stride when it comes to academia. It's an exciting world, people. I mean, really, is there any thrill greater than finishing a paper 30 minutes before the deadline, hyped on Red Bull and black coffee and pure adrenaline? The most epic of epic naps happen after nights like these, and I like to think that I'm helping myself become a better napper by pushing myself to the extreme. I like to live on the edge. But you know, in a safe, non-hazardous to my health kind of edge. Papercuts are edgy, right?

On Blogging, Part I of..Many?

2010-08-15T06:18:00.000-07:00

In keeping with the idea and name of this blog, I really haven't had the motivation to write for, well, quite a few days. I know that writing consistently is one of the tenets of being a good blogger and, more than that, I know that it's good for me to flex my casual writing muscles on occasion. I also know how good I feel about writing something that's moderately readable and entertaining.

I know all that and yet I still haven't managed to sit down, chug coffee, and make it happen.

Until today.

Don't think I didn't go through quite a few ideas to present in blog form. Oh no, quite the contrary! Every day, I looked at novel experiences and said, "Hm, what an interesting blog this would make." I was even grateful for the bizarre and annoying happenings, because I assumed they'd simply give me more fuel for blogging. But no. And when I say no, I mean no in the sense of, "I tried really hard and even have a few half-written posts saved on my laptop, but dude...just...no."

Because apparently, when you force things like that, they tend to suck.

And besides, I'm sure once the semester starts up, I'm going to have plenty of ideas, happenings, and people to blog about.

I was going to rant about the whole 'Ground Zero Mosque' (which is actually two blocks from Ground Zero, but I digress -- and calling it the Ground Zero Mosque is much more inflammatory and sensationalist, right?) debacle, but I think I may save that for a rainy day. Y'know, a rainy day when I feel like railing against the idiocy that is...other people.

Today's adventure: finish a paper. (Read: start a paper.)

2010-08-02T16:45:00.000-07:00

I'm going to let you in on a not-so-classified piece of information. I don't work well unless I'm under intense, mind-numbing, stomach-churning stress. I'm not going to say that I'm an unmotivated individual, but I am going to say that in order to get work done, I have to feel that I'm down to the wire and everything I do is absolutely critical to my success as a human being. (I'm also the least melodramatic person that you'll ever meet. Clearly.)

I have a paper due at 5 pm today and before 8 am this morning, not a word of it was written. Nary an outline of my final paper existed before I up and wrote the thing, start to finish, in a few hours this morning. Much to my surprise, I finished a few hours before the deadline, and I felt a strange sense of pride submitting my paper early this afternoon. Normally I'm wiping sweat off my brow and shooting vodka by 4:59 with a 5 pm deadline, but not today. Today I'm leisurely sipping my vodka with raspberry lemonade as a post-jog treat and trying to figure out what to do with myself for the rest of the day.

Contrary to what this post might lead you to believe, I'm actually an excellent student. I have a decent GPA, I test well, I write well, and I work in a fairly competitive lab as a student research assistant. I just can't do things in advance. I'll tell you a little story about a time I tried it. I had some sort of textual analysis due for a history class that I decided to write a few days in advance. "I'll be a 'good student'," I thought. "I'll do this before it's due so I can do all that stuff like letting it 'sit' for a few days and reading it again before I submit it. I'm really growing as a student. I feel proud of myself for doing this."

And I made a B. A B. In all my days of doing things at the last minute, I'd always received As on writing assignments -- B papers in college have been extremely rare for me, and all my highest grades have been on papers that I wrote, quite literally, at the last minute. So you see, it's really not my fault for resorting to this nail-biting, nerve-wracking behavior. I've been conditioned to do it. Thank you, BF Skinner, for allowing me to understand why I can't do things in advance anymore.

My next post will make up for what a douchestrudel I've been in this one. I'm really not this arrogant, I swear.

Inaugural Post

2010-08-01T15:16:00.000-07:00

I'm going to skip all the standard "first post" stuff and get right to the point: I'm a student, I procrastinate like nobody's business, and I'm bored.

It's been quite a while since I blogged publicly and I'm still not sure how I feel about it, but we'll get to that. I grew up in the era of going home from school and spending hours working on my personal website (okay, so maybe that wasn't so much an era as it is credence to the fact that I was a geek even then), so it isn't like this is new to me. It's been a few years since I designed anything, but fortunately for me, idiotproof sites like Blogger and Wordpress exist. Yes, I plan to (at some point) create a nifty header image and do other cool things, but until then, you get this lovely-if-not-prosaic design. Yay.

What all this really means is that my final paper of the semester is due at 5 pm tomorrow and I haven't even finished a legitimate outline of it. I'm not sure if I can really express how glad I am to know that the summer semester is wrapping up and will be effectively over for me at 5 pm tomorrow. I've taken quite a few classes that were, um, less than enjoyable, but the seminar I took this summer was almost unbearable. I really didn't like the professor's approach to the class, to the topic, and to the assignments. Maybe it's because I'm a little less liberal-artsy and a little more hard-facts-show-me-the-science, but I had a lot of trouble with the open-ended assignments. I'm sorry I'm not used to writing about my opinion, but people in the research community really don't...care...about your untested, unproven opinion.

But here, I'll opine until I can't anymore.