Assessment

My mother got a new iPad. Why does my mom always get the cool new tech? She never really learns to use it. She learns how to do a limited number of things on any gadget she buys, and then that's all she uses it for. It isn't that there's anything wrong with doing that, it just seems like an expensive hobby for someone who seems to have no interest in technology. She usually leaves it sitting there until I get a chance to come by, figure it out, and then show her how it's done.

Oh, crap! I just realized! She does it so I'll come over and hang out with her! What kind of a piece-of-crap son neglects his mother to the point that she buys $600.00 pieces of tech just to entice him over to have a cup of coffee and play with the thing? I need to think about this some more. Maybe I'm selling her short. Maybe she really is into the tech. I need to think about this some more.

Take-aways from my MA experience:

1. My scholarship would be much easier if I could "get organized."
2. After 42 years inside this head, I can say with a reasonable degree of confidence that I am unlikely ever to get organized.
3. "Get organized" is really just a euphemism for "stop procrastinating."
4. Procrastination is caused by dread.
5. Dread is a form of fear.
6. Woah, this almost turned into the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear.

What am I afraid of? Once I start working, the work (usually) turns out be satisfying to some degree.  I liken this to bowling:

I never want to go bowling. When people ask me to go bowling, I usually try to get out of it. But occasionally I can't think of a graceful way to bow out, and so I end up going. Every time I have ever gone bowling I have had a fantastic time. So, why do I always think I don't like to go bowling? I don't make sense.

Work is the same. I avoid it. I put it off. But once I get started I usually enjoy it at least as much as washing the dishes or whatever I was doing to try to avoid working. Sometimes I even really like the work; and when that happens, I'm generally sorry I put it off because now I have to give it short shrift because of time constraints.

Anyway, that was one take-away from my first two years of MA work. The second is related to the first; it's something I've learned but have so far failed to gainfully process: I generally work much harder than necessary on most things I do. I could do work that was just as good in half the time, and probably with less work, if I'd just keep my head in it. I get obsessive and end up ferreting around and reading a bunch of stuff, stuff I don't need to read, just because it's interesting. More dangerous, though, is the frustrating fact that any project I do generally expands to fill whatever time I allot for it. It drives me crazy. If I have a one-page reader response to do of a twelve-line poem, and I start it a month before it's due, am I being proactive? Am I getting ahead? NO! It just means it's going to take me a frelling month to do that damn reader response! I could do it just as well if I started it the night before it's due . . . maybe better because I wouldn't spend thirty days rethinking, re-reading the poem, Googling it, and second-guessing myself. Shesh! What a dork!

O.K. That may be a slight exaggeration. This is important, though, because I have a feeling that, while working too hard served me well enough in my MA (though it impacted my extra-academic life more than I liked), I have a feeling that doing so for my PhD will just wear me out.

I have a feeling that my success as a PhD candidate will turn largely on how well I manage to get this crap under control.

Also, I need a hobby. Dr. Marsden told me that last night, and I think he's right. I'm on it!

Thanks for a great two years, Dr. Marsden.