Finals Week

"I have never let schooling interfere with my education."
- Mark Twain

Yesterday afternoon I wrote a list of goals. I tend to write lists of goals whenever I know something needs to be done but don't feel like doing it. List writing is a great way to get the warm feeling of productivity without actually being productive. One can proudly flaunt off the list to friends and watch them think "he made a list, that means he's productive...I wish I could write lists like that." Sadly, what no one knows about my lists is that they typically don't get done. For example, my list last night had four simple things on it:

Goals:
Bed @ 10:00
Movie @ 8:00
Study Until 8:00
Eat Well @ Supper

One can begin to see where I went wrong just by looking at the chronological order of my list. Observe my priorities - Bed, Entertainment, Studying, Food. Here's the lowdown on how my list helped me through my day.

Bed.
Promptly after writing my list, I sat down on the immensely comfortable futon and absentmindedly popped open a caffeinated beverage. When I crawled into bed at 10:30 last night, I felt rather proud of myself. I had basically accomplished my goal (my goals contain lots of room for interpretation - 10:00 actually means somewhere after 10:00 but before 11:00). Sadly, the caffeine in the beverage I had enjoyed hours earlier decided to act up right then. I didn't sleep until 11:30.

Movie.
Ha. It's finals week. Movie didn't happen.

Study.
Thankfully, I did actually study yesterday, but it was a sort of a distracted studying. I was too busy contemplating the taste of my caffeinated beverage to really pay attention to how Western Civilization has progressed throughout the past five centuries. (Did you know that in blindfolded tests people are completely unable to differentiate between different carbonated beverages? Sprite, Coke, Pepsi - no one can tell the difference when blindfolded. Interesting...)

Eating Well.
I didn't eat supper. I had popcorn.

Welcome to Finals week. I'm not entirely sure why I'm blogging right now. I think I'll go write a list.
-Matthias

Read more...