10 degree (minus-whatever Celcius) temperature, howling wind accompany by hails of flurry white stuff and the painful numbness of one's nose and ears. It's just a typical Wisconsin winter, right? Right, only if it's not TWO months ahead of schedule. Damn you old man winter!
As usual, winter is my laziest time of the year. As much as I love school, just the thought of getting up at 8am every morning and face the relentless assault of piercing cold air outside is not an enticingly attractive prospect. And the signs of slothfulness have already reared their big, ugly heads: pushing the snooze button on the alarm clock at an alarmingly high frequency; showing up late and even later to class as the week progresses; everything else besides sleeping and eating is simply not worth doing; and the brain somehow freezes along with one's other external body parts.
I was late to my 8:50am Thai class every day this week, starting from about 2 minutes late on Monday and finally culminated in today's 15 minutes ultra-tardiness. Also, it suddenly dawn on me now that there are only about 5 weeks left till the end of the semester. Holy shit mother of bejeebers! I just realized that I have these unresearched and unwritten papers to be tended to. Instead of two or three big final papers (15 to 25 pages), I have a medley of 5- to 10-page papers to do. Here's a cursory list of my papers to write: HIST 457--one 5-page geographic profile of the Red River Delta and two 5-page literature reviews of one's own chosen topics (mine is Islamization and slavery in SE Asia); HIST 999--one 7- to 10-page paper on Soekarno and his evolution as the nationalist leader and a 5-page book review; and ANTHRO 350--one 2-page response paper and one 10- to 15-page final paper based on two of the semester's assigned readings.
I guess it is not as I bad as I thought it'd be; it's sort of a mixed blessing in a way. On one hand, I'd prefer to have a big research paper since I can do both the research and the writing in one fell swoop, as opposed to smaller, more staggered papers, where I have to conduct a series of smaller mini-researches that sometimes takes up as much time as, if not, more than, doing a full-fledged research. Also. having a bunch of smaller papers to do gives one the false impression of a lighter workload, and thus the seductive tendency to procrastinate. On the other hand, if one manages the workload and time well, having smaller, more staggered papers means a much, much lighter burden towards the end of the semester. Most of the papers can be done through the three-fourth of the semester, only if one is well-disciplined and does not fall prey to the lure of blissful procrastination. I'm most definitely the weak-willed and the undisciplined one.
Only if I can stop typing this post and get cracking on my papers, I can at least get two of them done. Damn you, my virtually non-existent readers for making me waste my time!!
2 comments:
hey,that's not fair..i do exist & i do read your blog!!haha..good luck nway (tho' i guess u might not need it!) ;)
Yeah... you and a bunch of other people I can count in one hand. It always strikes me as bogus when bloggers claim to write for no readership; only for their own self-satisfaction or enjoyment.
I think if you put something up online, you are writing--consciously or unconsciously--for an audience, large or small. It means that you do want people to know what you think. Whether they like it or not, or if it's relevant, that's besides the point.
Anyway, go do the old-fashioned diary if you want to write for yourself, and yourself only. Just make sure you get the one that comes with lock and key, or some form of biometric ID recognition.
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