What went wrong?
Part 2 of a 3-part series on January 16
I’ll be headed back to Orono in about 18 hours or so, and I think it’s a good idea for me to reflect on why last semester was so darn hard for me. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I came up with a lot of possible reasons.
First of all, I didn’t really like my classes as much as I had in previous semesters. Not only did I have to totally switch sides of my mind when I, say, did a three-hour CS homework set and then finished up my latest piece of artwork for 2-D Design, but I also found that there wasn’t as much variety in some of the classes as I had thought. Basically, it threw me off. There was a lot more reading last semester than in any others so far - and I don’t really like reading out of necessity.
Another reason could have been (I’ll get this one out of the way quick) my procrastination. I had my first 2-3 AM nights last semester, and that was pretty much because I didn’t start working until 9 or 10 at night. This one’s completely my fault; I was either working on sites, talking with friends, doing my daily contribution for The Obsessed Screen Savers Fan Club, just wasting time on the Internet, posting on Leoville, or doing a host of other things. I never really found a schedule; the one I ended up following made me lose some sleep, which in turn made me less able to do homework, which in turn made me lose some sleep, etc.
Speaking of schedules, the one last semester pretty much sucked. I had classes straight from 9:30 to 3:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays [shudder] - little or no time to have lunch in there. And no classes on Friday sounded like a great idea, but I ended up getting NOTHING done and it was harder than ever to get things done on Sunday. I think I have to at least have to have one class on Fridays, which is what I’m doing this semester (1-2 PM).
On top of all of that, I was still trying to find a balance between my geek side and my social side, and I ended up spending a lot of time on doing each but never really finding a good balance. I definitely learned some lessons in time management last semester, though, so hopefully I can put them to use this spring.
Having a drawer full of papers I had to go through didn’t help, either. Thankfully, I at least got that done over vacation. Now to start working on that growing ToDo list…
