The year I have dreaded is now here; it’s 2012, and I am a senior in college. Long gone are the weekends when partying was my number one priority. Now I spend my Friday through Sunday in the library, studying.
Just kidding. Who am I trying to fool? Everyone knows that being a senior in college is the best year of your life. I’m 21 now, and the Pub and Shorty’s are always on my To-Do list. Unfortunately, this lack of time management has gotten me in trouble this semester. And I’m sad to say that it’s barely October, and I find myself drowning in school work and boring assignments.
For starters, I am a Professional Writing major. For those of you who do not know, this means that I have decided that I want to spend the rest of my life crouched over my computer, writing the perfect “best-selling novel” or Oscar-winning screenplay. I know; I picked the worst major, when considering job opportunities. But writing is the only thing I know how to do, and do what I consider to be well. You can be the judge of that yourself, I guess.
So, because this is my senior year, and I thought I could handle it, I decided to take three writing classes. This is one reason why you should never transfer schools; when you get to be a senior, you have to throw all these writing classes into one semester if you want to graduate at the same time as your peers.
Writing, in general, is something that you have to do a little bit every day if you want to keep up with your craft. One of my professors suggests that we take a half hour each day just to write. That doesn’t sound too difficult, right? For me, when I’m already studying for four other classes, going to the gym, and trying to spend some quality time with the boyfriend, the last thing I want to think about is writing.
All that procrastination has led me to spending nights holed up in my room with my laptop, pushing out pages of a story that is worse than sucky. But at least I’m getting my ideas out, right? Wrong. This just leads to more time editing, a process that I would not wish on my worst enemy. But then I think about the day that I hand in my story, and I imagine that feeling of finally completing something that you may have literally poured your heart and soul and some tears into. As a writer, I live for that feeling. So I suffer through the months of writing and editing to come to that one moment.
Unfortunately, I am not the best when it comes to managing my time, so those months feel like torture. You’d think my time management would be at its best when I’ve already gone through three years of college, but I find it’s the opposite. I just have more distractions this year. There’s always a party to go to, shows I could watch on Netflix (now that my Internet connection is strong enough to buffer through 60 minutes), a bar to drink at or some new crepe restaurant to explore.
I told myself on Monday that I would spend more time this month focusing on things that really matter: school work, writing and finding my “me time.” It’s the start of October. It’s a new month, in which the mistakes in September don’t mean anything … unless my lack of writing means more writing for this month. But I’ll take that a day at a time. I’m just working on writing for 30 minutes each day.
By Mary Pickett