Grad School Blues

All right, so I am happy to know that I'm not the only undisciplined graduate student in the whole wide world. Apparently, ALL other graduate students are like this :D (Oh, will you look at that - I'm relishing in the delight that others, too, aren't being the best they can be! Tsk, tsk.)

Yesterday, a Gender Studies teacher of ours treated us (classmates and me) to dinner at this really cool restaurant. We all went. I rode with three friends, and the entire way, we were talking about what unproductive days we'd had, not getting anything done when all of us have at least two papers due by next Wednesday or Thursday. I had one due yesterday, but the teacher sort of extended the deadline for us, and so look at me - I'd rather blog :S So, at one point after we're all done eating, some of them start making plans for the rest of the night. Me, I knew I was gonna come straight home and be ambitious and all and pretend like I can get some important things done. Well, needless to say, that didn't happen :S I don't deserve to live, I swear. Anyway, so this one friend of ours says, "Okay, so who's in?" Another one says, "Not me. I have two assignments due tomorrow." The first one says, "What time are they due?" LOL. He knew these assignments wouldn't get done before their due time :p And we cracked up.

My Life!!!!

That reminds me, this one teacher of ours, herself a grand procrastinator (I think mostly everyone is! It's good to know, really!) -- and we know because she had to have something submitted to a conference, and two weeks later, she still hadn't done it :D -- had assigned us something that was due on, say, October 8th. On October 7th, she sends us an email to make an announcement, and at the end of the email, she writes something like: "And, just to remind you all, your papers are due tomorrow, the 8th. But no rush - you have more than twelve hours to work on them!" LOL!!

Me, I'll wake up, fresh and relaxed and happy, and say to myself, "Ahhh, what a beeeautiful day! No classes! [Note: This semester, I had classes only three days a week.] But I am going to get X amount of Assignment Y done before I go to sleep. BUT I'll just watch one episode of Full House. Just one. Okay, maybe two. They're only 22 minutes long anyway." And that one episode turns into 3, 4, 5!!! Next thing I know, alll my motivation to get some work done is gone! Other times, I'll take my tiiiime cooking, thinking, "Finally, I can cook myself a nice meal!" And since it sometimes takes time, depending on what I'm making, I'd muuuuuuuuuuch rather check my Facebook notifications or go to Twitter or check out some Youtube videos or do something equally useless than actually read for a paper or do some assignment while waiting for my meal to be ready!

Yesterday, while we were sitting there sharing our frustrations about our being such horrible grad students, one of us said, "I had papers to write, so to avoid actually working on them, I decided to clean the bathroom. And it's not like it needed to be cleaned! I just wanted to do it because it gave me an excuse not to work on important stuff." And me, I cleaned my room yesterday for the exact same reason! Sometimes, I'll go to sleep earlier than I need to -- and just lie there, lolling in bed (is this "lolling" a word? Does it mean what I think and hope it means? Well, I'm keeping it), waiting to fall asleep -- and think to myself that I'll wake up early the next morning and do my assignment then. Nope. Never happens! Well, it does happen, like when I have an assignment due that same day! Otherwise, I'll just keep pressing the Snooze button till the 5 minutes of snoozing turns into 3 hours or so.

Today, I wrote an important section of one of my papers, and I felt soooo good, SO proud of myself that guess what :) I decided I "deserved" a break! It's some 8 hours later, and, guess what  - that break isn't over yet!!! Somebody, shoot me!!! See what I meant that I don't deserve to be in grad school? Seriously, why am I such a time-waster!!

SO! That's my life these days! God, I hope to God no professor of mine reads this, hahaha!

No, but like many other grad students, "I need  help!!!" And I need it desperately. I'm going to improve. And I know how to. It might be that I procrastinate mainly because I work much, much better under pressure. I know this is an excuse for many students, but for me, really, I do work better under pressure. Otherwise, I don't work hard on the assignments. The best thing is this, though: my adviser has requested that I email her all the papers I write for each semester, and so that means that since she's going to be reading/reviewing them and then letting me know also whether they're conference-presentation-worthy or not, I have to work EXTRA hard on them. So that's great motivation. This semester, also, two of the papers I'm writing (both of which I've discussed on my blog a lot), I know what my arguments and theories are, I know what my sources are, I know what I'm doing and everything -- so I guess that's why I procrastinate with them so much. They're really exciting, and when I talk about them, I glow. Oh how I glow when I talk about my papers to someone! But I just need to sit down and focus on them, and I know that they won't take me more than 6-8 hours total if I gave them the attention they deserve. I've pretty much written all my thoughts and notes out - I just have to organize them into paper format and organize my footnote and bibliography. That's really all with both of them. Oh, God - that makes me feel sooo much better now! I guess I'm not as terrible as I thought I was. Writing your thoughts really does help :D

k, bye.

P.S. Work hard if you're serious about your education. (Note to self before anyone else.)