This Is Nothing

Insane Graduate School Edition

5/13/2008

Procrastinatory

I have this recurring nightmare. . . I haven’t had it recently, but that doesn’t mean I can forget it. I’m assigned a huge project, and I have no idea how to DO it. Suddenly it’s the day before the project is due and here I am, unforgivably behind schedule with no idea how to even get it started.

Graduate school has reminded me of this dream again and again. A huge project that I’m afraid to even start, and that I’ll never finish in time. Mess. Failure. Everyone else in class humming along and me simply LOST. It’s the classic nightmare of the professional student, because your whole life is egged on by the good grades and test scores. And in graduate school, the grades fall away and the guidelines for this assignment are woefully unclear.

But there’s this mind-trick I’m trying to employ, similar to the one I used to complete papers I didn’t want to start in college. Pretend it’s all a joke. Write the crappiest paper you can, and cover the pages in no time. The very idea of writing an excellent paper leaves me 100% overwhelmed. Writing this paper will take forever. It will stress me out, even more than *thinking* about writing it is. These are both lies that my brain tells me. So I have to be trickier than it is. I have to convince that voice that this isn’t a real paper. This is a hilarious spoof paper that can be unforgivably incorrect.

Eventually, I’ll go back through and edit it into something real and accurate. And then the blank page is defeated. But my brain is being really stubborn this time. Grrrr.

So I am feeling very procrastinatory today, and that stresses me out (on top of the stress that is making me procrastinate). It’s really silly.

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