Priorities

Okay, so I've just woken up from a nice, hour and a half nap (which I desperately needed, by the way) and I'm really ready to focus and do the work I need to do.

In a recent chat with my chemistry professor/advisor (he is both to me, poor man) he suggested that I make, literally, a to-do list. Which, after some thought, is a really, really good idea. So, as I sit here shoving paper through my printer to print out my acting homework and my education seminar reading, while the rain is pouring outside and the wind blowing (it's been freezing all day - my room finally has some semblence of temperature now that I have the door open to the way-warmer (not really, it just feels that way) common room) I'm thinking about what I'm going to put on that list. How I'm going phrase it. How I'm going to decide what takes priority over something else.

Well, today is Monday. (Insert "Thank You, Captain Obvious or some variation here). Which means tomorrow is Tuesday. (Again, follow directions above.) Tuesdays are a little crazy for me. I begin my Tuesday morning, bright and early with my education seminar at 7:30 in the morning, taught by way-too-perky morning-people professors. Why am I complaining? Out of the family (besides our parents) I am the morning person. In that regard, I am a 180 from my lovely sister. I would have to wait for permission on Christmas when she was in college to wait until 9 to go upstairs and pry her rear end out of bed. Then again, I was also 9 years old. Anyway, 10 years later, I'm still the morning bug. I like my classes in the morning (leaves my afternoon's free for when I would have soccer practice) and I like being done relatively early (when everyone else is just rolling out for their first class). So, that being the first thing I would need, and following Spock's incredibly Vulcan idea of this "logic" thing, it would be the thing I would need to get done first.

Now, after my teaching seminar I drive out to the school that I've been placed in to observe an actual high school chemistry classroom. I do this from about 9:30 until a little after 11 where I drive back to campus and head to Acting I. Still following Spock, my Acting homework would be next in line to be done. Tuesdays become a little hectic because immediately following that (and by immediately I mean 10 minutes later) I have to be in Chem lab. In complete chemical safety attire (no HAZMAT suit yet, people. Just closed-toed shoes, no glasses, and safety goggles. But no way in hell am I wearing my good clothes that I wore to high school in that lab because, let's face it, shit happens. Also usually why I wear a bandanna over my hair, but that's mostly to keep fly-aways in line and so I don't have my gloved hands near my face).

I have a formal lab report rough draft due tomorrow. I have no started the thing. Therefore, I predict that the bulk of my afternoon (what's left of it) will be spent on that. I have no problem. It's one of those things that absolutely must get done. So, if I can get to the stuff on my list after that, that's gravy. What I don't get to, will invariably get shuffled to tomorrow's list (which I plan on writing tomorrow morning, possibly at breakfast. Maybe during the beginning of physics lab). The important thing however, is this:

Don't keep shuffling things from one page, one day, to another. Otherwise, Louise, they will not get done.

Which, honestly, is what I've been doing so far.

And a month into the school year, you might think it's too late. But it's not. It wasn't too late for me to learn the proper way to tell pericyclic reactions apart, recognize them, and use them for an exam. It wasn't too late to write a decent history paper, all while studying for said chem exam. Three weeks in is not too late. Not if I get everything together now. Which I plan on doing.

My goal is kick my procrastination habit. I've kicked a lot of things in my life, but I get the feeling this is going to be the hardest. But, honestly, I wouldn't be who I am, and I wouldn't be where I am, if I shied away from a challenge, especially one as mounting as this.

I'm a great one for talking my friends up when they need it, giving them encouragement and the little shove to get them back on their feet and back in the thick of it. I tell them they can do it, they can do anything they really, really want to do, if they put their mind to it and slug it out, slogging through the mud.

Now it's time for me to follow my own advice. And I think I'll do just that. Now, not later.