The decline of a student
I took a bet with a friend that i’d finish my dissertation by the 14th of this month. I lost. I think this is fairly good proof that i’m not cut out to do a PHD or what not bc I simply lack the academic discipline required for such an endeavour. I’ve had about 9 months to write 10000 words, and that really is piss easy, specially when its a topic of your choice. But I’ve managed to keep putting it off and now i’ve got about 10 days to go for the deadline. I’ve done about 4500 but I’m still finding numerous excuses to do other things. My ability to do academic work has been on the decline for a while now. In school teachers used to love me, I worked hard, didn’t disrupt the class, got good grades and was generally nerdy. I think I peaked at OL’s, where everyone goes crazy and studies bc its the first public exam. Luckily in my year we didn’t have this AS level nonsense and had the whole of lower 6th to arse around. And arse around I did. I did literally no work during first term and almost failed my termly maths exam. (Lots of ppl did quite poorly, I remember the following conversation across the classroom)
Bugger 1: Ado you bugger, how much did you get?
Bugger 2: Not too flash you bugger, managed 15%
Bugger 1: Woohooo!! kicked your ass!! 16%!!
I could not be bothered taking my finger out till sometime in the middle of upper 6th. My mother claims that my econ teacher told her during a parent teacher thingy that he thinks I’ve got a crisis of faith. I still think that’s bollocks. I got my conditional uni offer which was 3As so I had to sort something out. Until then I completely struggled to motivate myself, I really needed to feel the noose tighten.
The same story continued in uni, I completely bummed around through 1st and 2nd years and woke up in the middle of Hilary term in final year and started to work. And again during masters. I didn’t work for the whole year, barely made it out of the house in 2nd and 3rd term and almost screwed up my exams. The week before my exams I went to Bristol for a Googoodolls gig, 2 days before my first paper I went to Oxford for a friend’s final exam party, resulting in being unable to work at all the day before the exam. The night before my first paper I felt what exam pressure was about for the first time. I knew about 40% of the syllabus and I panicked big time around 3am. Each time I looked at my notes my mind went blank, and I was forgetting the few things that I knew. I paced back and forth, palms sweaty, throat dry. I drank lots of water, pissed a lot and slept for a couple of hours. When I woke up I felt a bit better, and could actually remember a few things, but I knew deep down that I had a fairly good chance of completely messing this up. The paper went surprisingly ok. I had 2 very doable questions and one bluffable one, bless social sciences. The other two exams were ok as well, (despite going to Southampton to see Bon Jovi 2 days before my second exam) and I have a hunch that I got away with murder. (I still didn’t get my results so I won’t know till after my dissertation). I thought to myself at that time that i’ll not repeat that mistake for my diss, that i’ll work 3 hours a day, every day during summer and get through the diss with plenty of time to spare. But that doesn’t look like it’ll happen.
It’s not a great feeling to know that you could have taken a better stab at things. I know that whatever happens on the 31st of August the guys in uni will not be seeing my best effort. The same applies to my June exams. I know that I could have done this really well if I wanted to, and that’s a pretty poor effort on my part. I think it stems from a degree of over-confidence. I’ve always thought that I could do almost anything that I set my mind on, but clearly that’s gone a bit too far on this occassion. I also need to work on my self discipline. On the other side of the coin, my apathy may stem from knowing how pointless this whole exercise is. In all probability I will pass this, get my masters and in 5 years time not give half a shit about how well I did my dissertation and my exams. It’s all a means to an end. So I’m hoping that once I find something I really want to do, and am really passionate about, I just might not fudge it and muck about. The question now is what that thing is. More on that later. Right now i’m listening to Mozart and staring at the ceiling. Things have clearly gone pear shaped.
