Dinosaurs, now.
So, I've been to the psychiatrist twice. It's at the very least comforting to be taken seriously as I tell someone problems that would usually make people just scoff and call me a slacker, tell me I need to grow up. Whether it's helping, I'm not sure yet, and it's probably too early to expect anything anyway. Today looks good, though. More on that later.
Retaking a statistics class this summer. Summer classes, it seams, are served in shot glasses. 3 hour classes, 3 days a week, done in one month. I feel this will somehow make things easier for me, not sure why. Some nonsense about being unable to procrastinate because everything goes so fast I'm already at the last minute the moment something is assigned, perhaps. Well, that and because the class is so short the teacher can't give one big nightmarish quarter-long project like she usually does, and will assign a number of much simpler projects instead.
I thought of a device to help me, today. Not a terribly novel idea, and one that has been suggested to me before, but perhaps I've finally come to realize the wisdom of it, or maybe it was just the way the idea came to me in this case that allowed me to see it in a "new light" (quotation marks to account for cheesiness and slight excess of drama in cliche metaphor). A planner thingy. Y'know, with dates and stuff, where you write things you need to do under the appropriate day and all that.
This idea came to me as I sat in class today and felt the desire to talk about its strangeness in my livejournal. As tends to happen with these kind of thoughts, I began thinking about it instead of paying attention to class, partly because of the common victory of a more interesting topic over a less interesting, and partly I realized to increase the chance that I would actually do it. My mind is rather volatile, going through many and significant changes in state over relatively short periods. Just during the half-hour drive home all my plans for the rest of the day can and often do change completely. Extensively thinking about and planning an idea for what to do later the moment I get it increases the likelihood of it staying in my head to actually be done.
An idea struck me then that if I wrote all such ideas down regularly, then I wouldn't have to spend so much time burning it into my skull in the middle of class. To get computery (as well as metaphorical), it would be like saving the state of my head to file for later reference. Much more effective and efficient than trying to memorize it. So, I got a planner thingy to make this practice as smooth as possible, and I used it, and it's possible it helped me focus in class as intended.
Perhaps more importantly it also helped me do the things I wrote in it, including the homework. Though it was quite easy and hassle-free homework (not graded or handed in, just to be used as notes for weekly quizzes, and it wasn't anything I needed to take notes on to remember), and I did it in class. Doing homework at home is what I need to work on. But for some reason I feel like this planner thingy will help with that, too. No concrete reason why. Maybe its because, as something I've never seriously done before, it's something I haven't screwed up yet; so far I have never failed to do something I wrote in my planner thingy. Makes it kind of sacred, for lack of a better word.
Well, my dad is home and just finished hassling me about getting a job. Now those ever so rare feelings of being on top, even for just a day, are gone and I feel inadequate once again. Huzzah!
Retaking a statistics class this summer. Summer classes, it seams, are served in shot glasses. 3 hour classes, 3 days a week, done in one month. I feel this will somehow make things easier for me, not sure why. Some nonsense about being unable to procrastinate because everything goes so fast I'm already at the last minute the moment something is assigned, perhaps. Well, that and because the class is so short the teacher can't give one big nightmarish quarter-long project like she usually does, and will assign a number of much simpler projects instead.
I thought of a device to help me, today. Not a terribly novel idea, and one that has been suggested to me before, but perhaps I've finally come to realize the wisdom of it, or maybe it was just the way the idea came to me in this case that allowed me to see it in a "new light" (quotation marks to account for cheesiness and slight excess of drama in cliche metaphor). A planner thingy. Y'know, with dates and stuff, where you write things you need to do under the appropriate day and all that.
This idea came to me as I sat in class today and felt the desire to talk about its strangeness in my livejournal. As tends to happen with these kind of thoughts, I began thinking about it instead of paying attention to class, partly because of the common victory of a more interesting topic over a less interesting, and partly I realized to increase the chance that I would actually do it. My mind is rather volatile, going through many and significant changes in state over relatively short periods. Just during the half-hour drive home all my plans for the rest of the day can and often do change completely. Extensively thinking about and planning an idea for what to do later the moment I get it increases the likelihood of it staying in my head to actually be done.
An idea struck me then that if I wrote all such ideas down regularly, then I wouldn't have to spend so much time burning it into my skull in the middle of class. To get computery (as well as metaphorical), it would be like saving the state of my head to file for later reference. Much more effective and efficient than trying to memorize it. So, I got a planner thingy to make this practice as smooth as possible, and I used it, and it's possible it helped me focus in class as intended.
Perhaps more importantly it also helped me do the things I wrote in it, including the homework. Though it was quite easy and hassle-free homework (not graded or handed in, just to be used as notes for weekly quizzes, and it wasn't anything I needed to take notes on to remember), and I did it in class. Doing homework at home is what I need to work on. But for some reason I feel like this planner thingy will help with that, too. No concrete reason why. Maybe its because, as something I've never seriously done before, it's something I haven't screwed up yet; so far I have never failed to do something I wrote in my planner thingy. Makes it kind of sacred, for lack of a better word.
Well, my dad is home and just finished hassling me about getting a job. Now those ever so rare feelings of being on top, even for just a day, are gone and I feel inadequate once again. Huzzah!