An attempt at a meaningful conversation topic...

[Blast]

I'm wondering if any of you have this problem, have overcome this problem, or have any suggestions.

I'm a procrastinator and a slacker quite beyond any other procrastinators/slackers I've ever met. I hate nearly every class I've ever taken at any school, and I hate doing homework and studying more than anything on earth. I never do work in increments over the week, and I don't even save myself nearly enough time to do the work once I save it until the end. Half the time, I do a shitty job and get an A or B anyway, and the other half the time, I just don't even do the assignment. It doesn't make any sense, because all logic tells me that I should just use the downtime I get every day to work on my papers so that I never have to worry about it, but for some reason, I'd rather sit around and play Subspace or post on forums or some other completely useless and ungratifying task than do homework. Even right now, I have an insurmountable amount of work to do by 6:00 PM tommorow, and I can't make myself do it. I used to be clinically depressed, but I'm not any more, so I don't really think that's it. I'm happy 100% of the time that I'm not faced with a ridiculous amount of work to do due to my procrastination. I got through grades 1-12 this way, and I even skipped a grade, and graduated after 11 years, but my unorthodox methods of doing work aren't quite cutting it in college, and I'm worried that I'm going to lose my scholarship here at Tulane and be forced to transfer to another school.

The only reason I'm posting this problem here is because you all play or have played Subspace at this point, and Subspace has always been the number 1 activity I turn to when I want to avoid work. I wonder if any more of you have/have had this problem or have a six page paper about Ideologies written that you could e-mail me. Yeah, thanks.

[Jason]

I've found myself exactly where you are now. I've tried to figure it out, much as you are trying to do now. Here's what I've come up with...

High school was utterly dull and not challenging in any way, shape or form. I sailed through each and every grade with minimal effort. Now I'm in college. Things are substantially more challenging than they ever were in high school. What is the result of this increased level of difficulty? Fear. I'm afraid of failure. This fear drives me to avoid doing work at all costs because I do not want to have to face the proverbial music. Sure I can pull a half-assed job and still get an A or a B most of the time. However, what if that one time I try really hard on a particular assignment, I crash and burn?

I hope my thoughts help you to realize where your problem lies. Find comfort in knowing there are many others out there who are in the same position as you.

[Blast]

Yeah, I've sort of wondered if fear of failure is somehow related to my problem, but at the same time, I have a hard time believing that I care about a letter grade or a dumbshit teacher's opinion enough that my brain would subconciously sabatoge my entire life for it. What I really care about is what I think of my own work, at least I think. I think perhaps I'm more afraid that my intelligence won't be able to get me through the rest of my life. It's gotten me pretty fucking far so far, and there's no reason to think that it won't get me through college (I worried about failing out of high school, but then finished in three years with a 3.4-ish). At the same time, though, if I don't find an occupation that I love doing, I know that the rest of my life is going to be like this, and I dread that possibility tremendously. I know that if I never work at anything, I'll never be in the position to have a job that's challenging and progressive enough for me, but at the same time, I'm afraid that no matter how hard I work, I'll still just end up feeling that everything I've done with my life (career/work-wise) will have essentially been a total waste. What's funny is, most of the time, I see myself ending up as a schoolteacher, but then I'd just find myself caught in a huge fucked-up government system that'd just force me to turn more kids into lazy uninspired drones like myself.

[Da1andonly]

Hell yes... every time I have some homework that I don't feel like doing, I go and sit by my comp, thinking "just for 10 minutes"...U know what that leads to.

I got a 4 (didnt pass the course) in 2 courses last termine, cause I didn't read enough....I spent my time going out to party and playing ss.

[GuruMeditation]

Re: An attempt at a meaningful conversation topic...

Originally posted by Blast
An attempt at a meaningful conversation topic...

Sorry to go out of topic but you're brave to try that here.

[sTuPiD-gErBiL]

go with your instinct. if you find yourself forcing your way through college even though you absolutely hate every second of it and feel you're not gaining anything out of it than a damn piece of overglorified paper, then you're wasting your time and shouldn't be there in the first place. and more importantly, you're wasting your money (in the event your scholarship gets retracted).

it happened to me. i breezed through school all the way up until college. then i lost all interest completely and found myself skipping classes and dropping classes constantly. i even lost my scholarship. most of the classes weren't challenging at all, and the ones that were challenging, i felt i was gaining absolutely nothing from. and on top of things, i had no clue what i wanted to do for a living. so after switching majors 6 times (visual arts, computer science, english, advertising design, computer 2d/3d design, business/general studies) in less than 4 semesters, i finally dropped out. it gave me a chance to get a full time job, which i landed as a graphics artist at a tv station. then in the free time i had which would have been spent on school, i spent working on material with my band. and that eventually guided me to start learning the ins and outs of audio engineering. so now i'm in the middle of recording 2 local bands' EP's, as well as my own band's full length, and i'm on the verge of launching my own record label for southern louisiana/texas/mississippi bands. i'm by no means as wealthy as a college degree supposedly guarantees, but i live comfortably enough to pay the bills... and more imporantly, i actually have a direction in my life now. and it's a direction i'm enjoying the hell out of so far.

i've learned way more on my own than college would ever teach me. college teaches fundamentals and theories, but doesn't give you shit for real-world application. basically, if you know exactly what you want, college will help you excel at that. but if you've still got some soul-searching to do, then i suggest you drop college and spend some time working around with different occupations until you find something you love. the college will still be there to go back to if you want to hone your focus.

[Superted]

same, i even skipped college to play ss, although it was boring and dint wanan go in the first place

[Louis XV]

A few comments:

I find myself in the same situation as Blast and J. I don't think it's a fear of failure that prevents me from doing stuff, not even on a subconscious level. It's simply the fact that the work is uninteresting. High school was a breeze, college is actually less breezy at the moment, yet still just as boring because of all this general education crap. I expect it will get more interesting when it's time for the nerdier shit. I plan on going out and finding work in my field at least during the summertime, because as gerbz said, experience means much more than sitting on your ass and reading about theory, both to you as a person and to potential employers.

btw J, I changed my major to EE :P :P :P

[Jason]

Originally posted by Louis XV
btw J, I changed my major to EE :P :P :P

SELLOUT LOU
SELLOUT LOU
SELLOUT LOU

Nah, I'm just kidding. I'm switching to CE at the beginning of the winter trimester. CS is just too damn boring. I also found out I can take a course called Beers of the World and actually get credit for it!

[arrogance]

Cutting class right now just because I don't feel like going. I do exactly enough work to get by in university with B's or so, I've essentially been winging the last 4 years and still finishing with an above average GPA. It's not that I hate my studies, I'm just obsessive compulsive about 4 or 5 different hobbies that dominate my thoughts at different times.

[Blast]

Originally posted by Jason
I also found out I can take a course called Beers of the World and actually get credit for it!

My friend said she took Beers of the World (or some beer class with a comperable name) and it was a really high-level Biology course, and that it was one of the hardest courses she'd ever taken. Brewing is complicated, I guess.

Gerbs, yeah, that's inspiring, but I don't really have a passion for any particular career that I could have if I dropped out of college. I'd be just as bored by work, so I'm not sure where it would get me.

[Annux]

I think people drop out of college so much is because of the horrible 2-year general education curriculum. I am taking some of the worst core/required classes imagineable and doing bad in them because I just don't care. I figure that by the time you reach your third year of college, you're bound to be enrolled in classes you enjoy that correlate with your program of study and you're sure to know the good professors from the bad ones.

If any of you seriously think that you're going to get decent jobs without a college degree, you need a wake up call. Besides the fact that a majority of upper-level executives of companies are highly educated and only recruit college graduates, America is starting to actually steal people from other countries with better grades/more experience for fulltime positions (Demand for nurses at all time high, getting healthcare workers from Africa, Demand for inner-city teachers on a rise, getting graduates from Canada and such).

And if you think that all of that is irrelevant, there really isn't anything better to do at this moment. Although 3rd quarter reports showed a steady increase in the overall GDP, unemployment is on the rise and will continue to grow as the US dwindles in the recession. Now is the time to go to school, not seek employment unless you're an experienced, specilized individual.

My advice is to stay in school and try your best for these shitty GenEd classes. Once you start taking major-only credits, you're bound to enjoy and learn at the same time.

[sTuPiD-gErBiL]

annux has a very valid point about surviving the core curriculums to get to the good stuff, but it depends mainly on your location. if you're going to a good college that excels in your area of specialization, then the upper level courses would most likely be challenging and interesting. but in my case, the college i went to has reputable nursing and petroleum engineering curriculums while everything else is shit. i was fortunate enough to have tested out of most of the generic core crap before i even started college, so i got to experience some of the specialized classes for each major i switched to. unfortunately, none of them were worth a damn at the college i went to (hooray for UL-Lafayette). my best option was to drop out and learn what i wanted to know on my own. and i wasn't about to go into debt to pay off a degree that didn't mean shit to me.

and the real world isn't necessarily about degrees. sure, most of the more popular professions require degrees. but you can find plenty of work without one. the trick is to look for a job that lets you show your skill rather than what you might've memorized from a textbook. my interview to land the tv graphics job consisted of a sit-down talk followed by showing off my portfolio of logos i had designed as well as websites i had built. if an employer has a choice between a newbie with a college degree or someone who requires very little training even though they don't have that paper, he'll go with the guy that already knows his shit because that person will be more likely to be able to work on his own (and fill that position) quicker than the fresh-out-of-college guy with no experience.

but both sides have their perks and flaws. it's a big decision whether to stay in or drop out of school, so don't take it lightly.

[Louis XV]

Originally posted by Jason
CS is just too damn boring.

werd. also, there are 2340923 people here majoring in CS because they think it's easy money later on (OMG IT HAS THE WORD COMPUTER IN IT! ITS GOTTA BE GOOD). I figure I have enough practical experience with the engineering aspects of CS to take it to a different (more interesting) field and apply it there. CS don't mean diddly. you can get a "computer" job with a math degree. staying up to date with the hot skills means everything when going for a software job. (you'd have to take a power drill to my abdomen to make me enter the software field). not to mention all the foreigners flooding in with their visas, cutting salaries by 30-40%. blizah

[pv=nrt]

Being as i am now nearing the ending of my college fun times i know exactly what most of you are going through. Hs was a freaking breeze where you study the class before a test (by study i mean you open the book and sleep on it). College was a rude awakening in boring classes that dealt with nothing i cared about and that i was failiing due to not knowing how to study. After your 2nd year the classes shuold be much more focused towards the actual career of choice. This will help you study because it should be of interest. If not get out now becuase you are wasting your time in that major. I am taking a bunch of CHEN electives now and most are interesting because they involve real life application and problems. I have probably studied the least this semester but have some of the highest grades because its interesting to me and i pay attention in class and digest the information.

I am looking for a job now and i am finding my lack of co-op or intern expereince hurting me alot with some companies. Experience matters a lot with bigger companies. Smaller ones don't seem to care to much about it, nor do the non mainstream employers of majors. Such as my company i am really hoping to work for, Frito-Lay. who woulda thought that frito-lay hires chem engs?
any way on the procrastination thing-no cure. I am still one of the biggest procrastinators i can be. I have found that if i wake up early for a test, and have later classes, i can get in a lot of good studying becuase barely anyone is on ss or awake to distract me from working on stuff.