The last couple of weeks of school can truly be hell, not only because of finals but because professors are trying to cram the last half of the course into two weeks. Everything we have put off over the semester is suddenly due. With all of the class work, responsibilities and engagements looming like your girlfriend’s mother’s birthday, two weeks suddenly seems like no time to work on anything-opinion articles, for example.
Somehow, though, most of us survive it. Inspired by finals and “The Myth of Keeping Up,” a Web log entry by Kathy Sierra, my roommate and I mulled over just how we have learned to keep up. Between us, we have three and a half engineering degrees, two minors, over a decade of college and about a Jovian year of procrastination, so have faith in our wisdom. Or ponder why we are still in Starkvegas with all of that education and wisdom. Whichever.
First of all, avoid “World of Warcraft.” It will invade your very thoughts like a troll priest with mind control, suck your soul out like a gnome warlock and otherwise occupy all of your time.
Don’t worry if you seem to be behind. The truly motivated never get ahead. If you have passion for what you do, there will always be one more path you’d like to explore, one more book to read and one more goal to achieve. Don’t stress being behind because you’re doomed to it. Instead, you have to prioritize what you work on. This is doubly true when faced with deadlines such as final papers and articles. Intuitively, the projects with the nearest deadlines should get priority. But priority does not necessarily mean “right now.”
As my roommate notes, people function in cycles. We have sleep cycles, eating cycles and many other cycles-insert coarse joke here. Being slaves to these cycles, we have times when we are more driven to or just more capable of succeeding at a given task. Have you ever read something 20 times, remembered nothing and given up in frustration, only to come back to it the next day and understand it right off? Getting work done is a function of when you attempt it. Most of us don’t go to sleep at 9 in the afternoon-evening really starts at midnight-so why expect to get work done on a Saturday when your “watch cartoons” cycle is at its maximum? If your work cycle is off peak, difficult projects go from difficult to frustrating.
When you are not at peak working performance, focus on avoiding stress. If a project needs work, look over it and get some of the easier stuff out of the way. Get a feel for the material, but don’t worry over its every nuance. Go out and do something fun if that’s what you are used to. It’s the whole cycle thing again. Learn to control and minimize stress. Remember, stress leads to failure-just ask any engineering student.
Picking your environment carefully can lower stress. For instance, work in a place where video games or the Internet are not easily accessible if that helps. The library or some other class-like environment works best for me. Maybe a coffee shop or even a bar will work-I’ve gotten huge amounts of work done at Polliwogs, for instance.
Most importantly, as the Oracle at Delphi said, “Know thyself.” You are an individual, and no general advice column-even mine-is going to apply perfectly to you. You may have to try several different things. For instance, I have discovered the best way for me to work in some classes is to stay up until I’m delirious and suddenly, at 4 a.m., it all makes sense, but that’s a last resort.
Of course, if you were looking for a quick fix to your finals dilemma, I’ve failed you. “Knowing thyself” takes time, whole lifetimes really, though a semester’s worth is helpful. All I have for you is the knowledge that failing one semester is no big deal-there is academic forgiveness, and many graduate schools and employers are willing to overlook such a statistical anomaly.
Don’t fail two semesters, though. I’d tell you what that does to your academic reputation, but this newspaper won’t publish Monty Python’s favored word.