Adapting Means of Procrastination

I was talking to my mom the other day how my biggest downfall is my procrastination. While I'm organized (some say obsessively) and I have everything planned out, I'm always scrambling at the last minute to get everything together. Apparently, I've always been this way. I would like to say that I work better under pressure, and this and that other excuses procrastinators tell themselves to feed the denial. Either way, I finally rid myself of my bad procrastinating habit. I was on top of everything, and unbelievably, I was getting sleep consistently and daily. Both are rarities in college and life (really). Then what happened, you ask? Two words: Spring. Break. You've probably heard of it, maybe experienced it. It's that week long tease of a vacation smack dab in the middle of the spring. You're far enough in to be pulling out your hair due to building amounts of stress, but not far enough to actually start counting down until summer. This break took my productivity and ran away like a bandit. Now, I'm left with this useless shell of what used to be and have reverted back to my old, die-hard personality, which puts procrastination above all else. The proof is in the post. As opposed to using my valuable and rare free time studying or doing busy work x, assignment y, and essay z, I'm writing a post about my intense levels of procrastination. Fitting, no?

So it seems my mother was right all along. (She will be shocked to see I actually admitted this fact and cemented it into blog world.) My biggest downfall is my procrastination as my productivity comes in little bursts of energy. After the little burst is dissipated, procrastination returns like the arrival of a long-awaited king coming home to his kingdom. If the metaphor is a little over the top, I remind you that I warned you of my tendency for the overdramatic. As much as I enjoy the reign of procrastination, I would love to channel those little bursts of energy into a week-long event where I could just knock out the rest of the semester in one fowl sleepless swoop. Unlikely, but a girl can wish, right?

With that, I leave you with a quote from Lewis Carroll, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there." Off to accounting... I don't think there's a specific road for that...

Going Through the Paces

I'm pretty sure I've mastered the art of time travel. 

I opened my eyes Sunday morning to an annoying frat boy clamoring down the hallway outside. (I'm positive a herd of elephants makes less noise.) I blinked. It's now Wednesday. What? Where did my week go? And how did the days mesh into one in my brain? It's official. I'm never blinking again. Headed to dinner with one of my best friends, I realized we ate together three nights in a row, and neither of us noticed that our evening patterns were repeating themselves. Stumble home from class, down time, more down time that leads into procrastination (all the while texting rapidly), dinner, Target (because who wants to studying for the impending doom that is Accounting 312), back to my apartment. Rocking out in my car with the windows down and Panic! At the Disco's new album, Vices and Virtues, blasting through my speakers, we found it oddly pathetic that neither of us could positively confirm the events of the previous days. It seems when I blinked I took everyone in my vicinity with me. Megan, too, had transported from Sunday to Wednesday. That giant jump knocked four days off our study time for the always-daunting, ominous accounting. Let the stress studying begin. 

Whenever accounting tests roll around, you walk into the business school to hoards of sophomores with frazzled hair, bloodshot eyes, and rumpled clothing. It's similar to facing an apocalypse every two or three weeks. The best is when accounting tests collide painfully with recruiting. Then add to the mix disgruntled kids decked from head-to-toe in business professional, which according to McCombs, is code for ridiculously uncomfortable. Let's also add that these tests last three hours long. THREE HOURS. Focusing on accounting for any given period of time longer than about 15 minutes is as painful as getting a route canal. Very honestly, I might actually prefer the route canal. I'm an MIS major; give me a computer and something to code, and I am the happiest girl in the world. On the other hand, give me a T-account and ask me to use present value and future value to determine the actual amount of an investment, and I will probably just turn around and walk quickly way. Either way, I have no choice, but to cram my skull full of knowledge I will hopefully forget immediately after the final. This, however, doesn't mean I have to be happy about it. Even the accounting majors dread these exams. We all suffer as one. Misery loves its company. As Alice once said, "It would be nice if things made sense for a change."Good luck to you all, and hopefully, it won't be off with our heads. 

Hello Blog World

As kids, most of us kept a journal buried in a drawer of socks or under a corner of the mattress. That small book kept our most intimate secrets. At the ripe age of 13 that usually was about the latest boy to catch my eye. Now, you all may have had better secrets to keep tucked away in the journal's crumpled pages. Because my real life didn't interest me nearly as much as my imagination, the pages of my journals were filled with endless stories about foreign lands, make-believe species, and a knight in shining armor (that often looked remarkably like my latest crush). When princesses and princes weren't involved, stories about large, crazy families formulated, spurred on by blockbuster hits like Cheaper by the Dozen or Yours, Mine, and Ours. As I grew older, writing stories became a part of my past, like the secrets that collected scattered amongst crumpled pages of forgotten journals. Free time became spare time, and then, spare time became no time. School took over my life. I had no idea the meaning of the phrase until I came to college. Granted, I attended an all-girls, Catholic, college preparatory school, so I'm no stranger to late nights turned early mornings, strict teachers, or endless assignments. College is a completely different matter. Here, I have free time, and I have no idea what to do with it. I spent a majority of my freshman year dancing around commitments, reveling in the newfound concepts of freedom and avoiding the necessary ones of time management and organization. And boy, did that hit me like a speeding truck. After multiple rounds of consecutive all-nighters, I quickly decided procrastination just wasn't working for me like it did in high school. (Quite honestly, I'm not sure it worked for me then either.) In any case, two years into my college education, I've got it down to a science. I have found a balance, and that precarious position is rocked on a daily basis. Somedays, the scales tilt towards insanity, and it seems that I'm barreling towards a cliff with no signs of slowing down. Other days, I'm on my a-game, and life seems to be a walk in the park. I never know what kind of day it's going to turn out to be. Like the bipolar Texas weather, it's possible to leave my apartment as Queen of the World with the sun shining brightly and walk back 75 minutes later in a torrential downpour hanging onto the edges of sanity with my fingernails.  As I'm sure you've noticed this far into the post, I have a talent for the overdramatic. It oozes from my being, usually with a dose of brutal honesty and a jigger of sarcasm. But hey, it makes life a touch more entertaining. Not that I need the entertainment, but my friends supply a more-than-healthy helping of crazy. I wouldn't have it any other way. People keep telling me that these are the best days of my life. I wouldn't want to look back and only see the inside of a library. I want to see days speckled with insanity and companionship like I do when I look back at that tattered journal hiding beneath the mattress of my bed at home. I want to look back and see my imagination caught for a moment in time as a post (this time around) as opposed to a rambling story about a princess in a large family traipsing through the country looking for her prince. I still don't have many juicy secrets to share, but I'm more than willing to provide stories of my crazy encounters as I try and balance life. As the Cheshire Cat said, "We're all crazy here."