Monday, January 25, 2016

Too Long of a Thought to Reasonably be a Status

I did a thing today.
Well, actually, I did many.
But this one thing in particular got me thinking.
I counted how many days left until I graduate from college.
Just in case there is anyone graduating from a Washington-quarter-system school this spring is reading and doesn't want to know, I will abstain from putting the exact count on here. I seem to be a minority in the fact that knowing exactly how many days left of something doesn't tend to stress me out.
I am presently a little stressed out. And, if I'm stressed out, so are lots of other people.
For now, I will leave them my sympathies but also say that I've got my own problems to worry about.
Namely the fact that all I really want to be doing with my spare time is crafts, going out for drinks, and planning for my future. I'll wake up in the morning and think "I'm actually going to do some job research today".
But then I go to class. Class is a problem. Well, class presents many problems.
  1. I don't remember the last time I felt fully engaged in a class.  
  2. Not feeling engaged leads to me being very tired and, sometimes, dozing off in class. 
  3. Dozing off in class lends itself to my feeling bored and thus not having much motivation.
  4. Not having much motivation means that I don't really ever want to do my homework.
  5. My homework needs to be done. 
  6. I spend a lot of time uselessly wandering the internet to procrastinate.
  7. Then I have to rush getting my homework done so I can go to bed at a semi-reasonable hours, which means that I don't get a chance to do anything that is productive but not homework. 
I spend a lot of time chiding myself, "Robyn, if you're not going to do homework right now, you could at least be looking at job stuff. Or working on that writing project. Or that crocheting project. Something that is productive somehow." But I know that technically homework should be my priority so I don't feel like I can let myself do other productive things.
This may sound a little ridiculous but, you've already read this far, so let me explain. When I get the ball rolling with a project, I don't want to stop. It is the reason why I have a few things at work that I know will only take my two minutes to do each but I wait until there's ten of them so that they can all just be done at once. A better way to say this, perhaps, is to say that if I get up the motivation to edit a chapter or research job prospects, I want to have a few hours to dedicate to that endeavor. However, with homework looming over my shoulder, it feels like I don't have the time to commit to these projects.
Then it gets to be nearly four hours of sitting around time and I get stressed out thinking about how much I could've have done and feel the instant desire to go straight to bed. Sleep is my solution for most problems I encounter.
I remember a lot of my teachers in high school saying that high school was preparing me for college. After having been at college, my contention is that high school doesn't really prepare you for college because there is so much more to college than academics. As I near the end of my college career, I worry that college hasn't really prepared me for post-college life. This is partially my doing...most students who study linguistics go on to grad school or do some sort of teaching program. I don't want to do either of those things, which begs the question: what is next for me?
I wish that I could dedicate my time to answering this question. Or, more accurately, all the little questions that lead up to this question: Should I work for a hotel? An airline? Should I take the plunge and try writing professionally? What about just working at something that will make me enough money to do the things I want to do with my life: travel, make crafts, spend time with people, write? How do I write a convincing resume? I have to do job applications again?
But, no, I have to start reading about adjective phrases, review the uses of 'estar', and diagram the rising action of short stories.
I give school the grade of A+ for its excellent job of getting in the way.

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