friday, february 9, 2001
overwhelming

ok, i admit it, uni is driving me crazy. i am feeling constantly overwhelmed and behind. last night i was up until 3 a.m. trying to get a paper done to turn in today. i got it done, but it's a page short and i wasn't happy with it. it could have gone a lot better if i had done the usual steps to making a great paper. do the reading, write out quote and research cards, skeletal draft with what the paper requires, fill in with quote and research cards, finally write the first real draft using the filled in skeletal draft, then edit and rewrite until it's all good. i get "a" papers this way. this time i didn't do my cards and was behind on my reading, so i tried to just write a draft. it didn't work. about 10 p.m. last night i finally scratched what i had written as it was at a total dead end at 3 pages (and i needed 7). i finally wrote a skeletal draft and filled it out from there.

i just don't know why i can't seem to get with it. i KNOW what i'm supposed to be doing, i KNOW how to go about doing it, yet i am perpetually behind and making the mistakes i had worked out years ago. because of the adhd that i didn't know i had and the total trashing of my personal management system of said adhd, i am not expecting the same kind of grades i got before. but i should be able to keep up if nothing else. i should know what i need to do and do it when it needs to be done. instead i am frantically do catch up every weekend, writing papers the night before they are due and struggling through everything.

what's worse is i feel the stress and pressure and i immediately want to do something else. my breaks become longer and longer the more pressure i feel. i know this doesn't help, i know it only makes it worse. but when i get that stressed my concentration is even worse than before. i end up sitting here staring at the whatever document i am working on and being totally blank. it has been very frustrating.

i have 5 weeks left. i have finished one midterm, have 2 to go and have this weekend to study for them. the good news is that my myth midterm is that last one on the list, so i will have longer to study for it. with all that out of the way, all my papers caught up, and presumably all my reading caught up (have to be so i can study for the midterms, right?), i have a bit of a "fresh" start for the second half of the quarter. let's hope i can get on my feet for this half.