Procrastinating students, post here!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Yes, it’s that time again.

So, it’s 11:00 on a Saturday night, and the term paper I need to turn in on Monday now consists of two, count 'em, two sentences.

I’ve wavered back and forth between sitting in front of the computer and staring at old tests for my Molecular Pathogenesis final that’s on Monday morning at 7:45 am all day long. I’ve cleaned my house. I’ve done laundry. I’ve napped. I’ve showered. I’ve put my two male betas’ bowls next to each other and watched them duke it out. I’ve ingested a cup of coffee, two Cokes, and an oatmeal cream pie in the last hour, and my sugar/caffeine rush should be hitting me any minute.

My paper is on “The Role of Infectious Diseases in the Holocaust”. It’s an interesting topic, but you’d be surprised how little has been written on it in English. I have the most screwed-up works cited list you could imagine.

I have five finals next week too. Egads.

What are you putting off until the last minute, fellow College Dopers?

2

Studying for my anthro final.

And the short story I have to write.

But I’m here to, er, dig up legends of paranormal stuff I can use in it. Yeah!

3

I am supposed to write a background paper explaining everything you need to know about the WTO and NAFTA if you’re interested in social issues. I haven’t really done any research, and it’s a huge topic. My professors think I’ve been working on it all semester. At least you’ve cleaned your house. My place is a mess. Today I’ve eaten junk food and watched Pretty Woman on TV. That movie isn’t even good!

4

I’m studiously not revising my thesis, the final draft of which is due no later than 10 AM Monday.

5

Right now I am playing with my new cable access, rather than:

A. Writing the 7 article summeries that were assigned at the beginning of the semester for my composites class.

B. Drawing a sort of a flange thing with a hole in it and a place for a screw in my engineering sketching class.

and

C. Studying for the final in my Advanced Air Traffic Control class.

May I recommend the Bell Witch story? It took place right up the road from me.

6

I have a project due in my English class Monday. A friend and I are writing a parody of Hamlet. So far, we are a little more than halfway through…we actually filmed a trailer (instead of filming the entire thing…time constraints and all) today, but we really need to finish. I hate projects.

jessica

7

I need to do the following:

A neural network project (teaching a network I designed to do syllabification of English words based on the rules of orthagraphic syllabification). I need a bit on Tuesday to talk about and the main thing is due the 7th. Mac OS X has crapped out on me so I need to do it all in the labs now. I have made no progress on it.

A sound structures project involving the shift my vowels undergo between careful and rapid speach. It is due Friday, I have done nothing for it.

A Phonology paper on speach recognition is also due Friday. I have two articles and a chapter out of a text book left of background reading for it. I have made no real progress on it. In fact I’m not exactly sure the format of these things.

A paper for my independent study about the experiment I ran this semester. I have managed to score the responses today but I still need to run the stats on it and then write it up. Again it is due Friday.

Oh yeah and one of the reasons this is real bad is that I seem to have developed Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (or a mysterious inflamation of the tendon leading to my thumb, it isn’t really conclusively known as of yet). I have physical therapy on Monday at 9:30AM. This limits how much I can type/write which is a real pain in the ass.

8

Um… does anyone want to help me out here a bit?

For the short story, I was going to add in a couple of local ghost stories. The story is set in an ambiguously located small town.

There was a great thread on these boards that was something like “Have you ever had an experience with the paranormal?” I’ve searched for it a few times and came up with nothing. And no, it’s not the “Tell me your local scary story” thread. The one I’m thinking of is a few months older, and blew up into three pages, and I was thinking I could harvest and mix up some of the concepts, or at least get inspiration from it.

Maybe someone remembers what the actual title was, or has it linked from somewhere else.

Oh, please don’t say it got lost in the Great Dope Winter. This thread had an account of La Llorona that scares me to even think about.

9

I have 4 finals left. I am not studying and prefer to see SNL while surfing the net. Finals are:

A. Portuguese- My grade depends on this exam, if I flunk it, I flunk the class because it will show as if I learned nothing the whole semester.

B. Microeconomics- Accumulative test, with 8 or 9 new chapters since the last midterm.

C. Chemistry lab- I need a perfect score to get an A…

D. Biology- I don’t go to the class.

10

I am very screwed.

First, I have a paper due monday that I have not started. I have had Word open for a few hours and have typed nothing. The paper is supposed to be about art. I know nothing about art.

I also have an assembly language program due monday. I have not started. The program involves binary arithmatic and I don’t know how to do that. I also have a big test in this class on monday.

I just finished Lab 1 for my database programming class. It was supposed to be done about 2 weeks ago, but had no real due date. It was incredibly easy, I just procrastinated way too long.

I also have an essay exam coming up next week that I havent studied for at all, and another Oracle lab to do. I wish my computer had enough RAM to run personal Oracle.

Ugh. I MUST write this damn paper right now and go to bed, then get up and write that damn program. I just can’t seem to get started. If the mainframe is screwed up tomorrow (which it often is) I am really screwed.

11

I’m not studying for my two tests on Thursday-I have no conventional finals to speak of. My excuse is that my hand hurts from making flashcards all day long.

I’m not revising my big experimental psychology paper, but that’s only because the professor hasn’t returned my rough draft yet.

I graduate in May. For much of this semester, I’ve thought of everything in terms of what I will miss after May 17, 3:00 p.m. No more Women in Psychology meetings, no more opportunities to join clubs or write for the Travesty, no more listening to the drummers on the West Mall, and on and on and on. The thought of never having another final (as an undergrad) really doesn’t bother me.

12

I am currently not reading sources for my paper on the Cathars, gender, and sexuality. The paper’s not due til Saturday, but the 10 minute summary presentation is on Tuesday. I only care because the prof is wonderful.

I am also currently not finishing the layout for the literary magazine.

My partner and I are collectively not doing our real analysis homework.

I am studiously avoiding finishing my independant study in abstract algebra.

I also haven’t done any astrophysics homework since the last exam. In the mean time, we’ve covered 150 pages worth of material. The final is on Saturday.

And I was doing so well on the senioritis front…

13

In theory, I’m working on flashcards for Monday’s biochemistry exam. In reality, I’m goofing around on the internet and teasing my cat.

14

I have to write an 8 page paper on Gore Vidal’s views on WWII era politics.
Pages left: 8
At 9 I finished the third book I had to read, and promptly went to a party (junior prom was tonight, so there are parties all across town). It sucked, I got back around 12:30. Then I came home and started posting here. Tomorrow I really shouldn’t be here at all.

15

I have a final in Negotiations on Wednesday, a legal Professional Responsibility exam the following week, and a take-home Family Law exam which I have the option of checking out for two days anywhere over the next three weeks. I’ve barely studied for any (although I can take comfort in knowing that most of my classmates have done the same, and at least my course outlines are ahead of theirs).

Rather than studying, though, I’ve been playing with Legos and intermittently been trying to earn some gold medals in Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II.

16

Cheers.

Sitting here thinking about my final project for my Art class which is due Monday at 2pm. If I get an A, I get an A in the class and my upper-division studio GPA rises above 2.5 and I graduate. If I get a B, I get a B in the class and I don’t graduate.

It’s going slowly. I’m feeling for that point of desparation which will allow me to flip into panic overdrive and work straight through to 2pm Monday without sleeping. Should kick in around dawn, if I know myself.

But for now, I’m getting a manic thrill from how delicious sitting here doing nothing feels. Music sounds better, every book is spellbinding, and no morsel of food is too trivial to put on shoes and drive to the store to buy and eat with childish glee.

I think I’ll take bath.

-fh

17

My MA thesis, on Jonson’s appropriation of antitheatrical tropes in Volpone, is currently being ignored. This is probably because I’ve still got a week before my next draft is due, and the final version isn’t due until May 20, so I can still tell myself it’s a long way off (though it isn’t that long really). Well, that and I felt sick today and didn’t feel like writing.

Current status of project: 20 pages (it has to be at least 25). This sounds good but in reality it’s still a disorganized mess, although my adviser thinks I’m on the right track (my preceptor, OTOH, doesn’t). It’s one of those cases where I have too much stuff and don’t know how to handle it all…

Oh, and I have to come up with a paper proposal for Seventeenth-Century Secular Poetry by next Tuesday, and have no idea what I want to write about (the class so far has been heavily Donne- and Jonson-centric; don’t know if I can handle more Jonson and have soured on Donne somewhat). I’ve also got a five-page (!) draft for The Book In Early Modern Europe coming up before too long…

(And this quarter is a relatively light workload. Last quarter was insane, though that was primarily my fault since I was in a show. I certainly don’t regret it, though – it kept me sane. :D)

18

[self-satisfied grin] I’ve JUST finished a (very minor) piece about how the practice of offering rewards to encourage desirable behaviour is bullshit (according to the ‘scientific’ evidence), so I hereby take away my previously self-accorded label of procrastinating student extraordinaire![/self-satisfied grin]
What about the major essays that are due soon?

What???
Can’t hear ya, can you speak up there please???

(I’m in denial…anyway, essays are just a capitalistic/communistic plot to discourage the exercise of free-thinking amongst the subjugated minorities…I’m poor, a woman AND a student, so I fit most of the UN categories…)

You can’t half tell I’m a Soc/HPS major eh?

19

You shoulda posted this thread last week…but then I probably would have spent even less time on my vital school projects. Let’s see, what didn’t I do last week??

My English paper:
Topic was creative power in the works of JRR Tolkien…i.e. his characters & their motivations for creative works. This meant that I had to read large parts of several of his books, because I wanted to quote (by page number) lots of stuff. Lucky I’d already read the parts of his Letters and the Silmarillion that I wanted to use, and all of LOTR, or I would have been very badly screwed.

As it was, the rough draft was due Monday (2 wks ago) and we were supposed to proofread each others’ papers Mon. & Wed. in class. I didn’t even start writing it until, what, Friday before it was due? after two pages I left it sit until Monday, worked on it a tad then, and ended up doing it in a rush Tuesday night, pulling an all-nighter for Wednesday. Did I mention it was supposed to be 10 pages? (I ended up with about 17.) Missed Monday’s class AND Wednesday’s, so I won’t be getting the marks for participating in the proofing.

The final draft I did a bit better on, actually getting it handed in by last Monday when it was due, and actually working on it when I was mostly awake. But I still didn’t start revising it until a day or two before it was due. Amazingly enough, the instructor liked the paper. I’ve skipped almost half the classes for that course, but the instructor seems to like my writing style, and the final was extremely easy, so I’ve gotten off easy. Will probably pull an A, but by no means because of my industrious labour!

My physics labs:
My excuse/reason for not doing these was that I had my English paper to do and couldn’t do both at the same time, but as we all know I wasn’t even doing my English when I was saying this. I had three lab experiments to write up, the first one dating from as far back as March 8 (!). I kept promising them to my instructor and not turning them in…finally started really earnestly working on them this week, figuring that final exam day was the absolute latest I could get them turned in. Exam day, Thursday, rolls around, and I’ve got about 1/2 of one done and 1/3 of another. Tell my instructor, “Yeah, I’ll bring them by this afternoon,” skip work and type like heck from 2 pm til 11:30 pm, getting two of the three done. Debate with self whether to finish up the other one, which is on oscillations in A/C currents–something I missed most of in class, and didn’t really understand the lab anyway. Decide to possibly work on it the next day, but wimp out and talk myself into not turning in the last lab. Still haven’t done it. Hope to God Mr Z. doesn’t give me an “incomplete” grade instead of the B or C I’ll get if he assumes I just forgot about the third one…

Studying for exams:
Three finals: English, physics, and calculus. Studied for approximately an hour, possibly two, for each one, the night before the respective exam. English was fine, but I knew the math one was going to be hell. It was–I’m glad I at least spent the time to put the relevant formulas on my formula sheet (we’re allowed a couple pages of formulas, just no actual problems/answers, for our exams). Everyone had a hard time with that exam, and my study buddy says he didn’t study for it either. That’s great for moral support, but it’s not going to help if I flunk the course! Don’t know my marks yet but assume it’ll be a B or so. Physics? I skimmed through the last few chapters of the book, making sure I kind of knew the basics of what we’d been talking about, but no hard-core studying. It didn’t help that I’d missed large sections of that class, too. I MEANT to tackle both the math & physics and really, really cram for them, I really did, but of course I never got around to it. Aargh. The marks bulletin board will show what I’ve gotten in those courses, I’m almost afraid to look…

Y’know what? I think this thread is some kind of confessional…can we have a celebratory/consoling thread after everyone’s done their exams?

I had no idea my (non-)study methods were so typical. :smiley:

20

Mmm, procrastination. So wrong, but it feels so right. In a stressful sort of way.

I’ve got to write a 2000-worder on the impact of global climate change on human evolution, by tomorrow. It’s now 8:17pm, and while it’s an interesting topic, and 2000 words isn’t really that much, I’m still beginning to feel a sense of impending doom, since all I’ve done so far is find a bunch of possibly-relevant online references.
The week before last was good. I left a huge-ass field work report on mammalian biology to the last weekend. I’ve never had to do an all-nighter, but I came close - it was 5:45am when I finally got to bed.

I’ve done worse, though. Once left a 2500 word essay until the actual day it was due. Started researching at about 11am and finished at about 4:50pm, with a 5pm deadline. Not bad. The only way I got away with that was because it was an artsy-fartsy essay that seemed to be suited to ass-pulled ramblings.

And once, for a book review, I based my review almost entirely on the sentence-long chapter summaries in the table of contents. I got a really good mark for that one, too.

This semester I’m doing a “flexible delivery” subject. Which means no actual due dates except for the exam, which is in two months. So I’m supposed to read through the lectures online, and do practical work in my own time, and submit short essays on a number of topics. I have done none of these things yet. I’ve decided I NEED due dates in order to motivate me, even if the motivation comes only within hours of said date.
Ok. Time to start my essay. …after I read a couple more threads.