Friday's Ramblings

What students may not realize is that their teachers are often more excited for the weekend than they are. All Friday long I’m jittery, and have a devil-may-care attitude about getting things done. I have all weekend to grade the huge stack of papers, why start now? Why bother telling the kids to be quite? If I can put up with it for another half hour I won’t see them again for days, and then it’s just three days of school till fall break! So all day long, despite the impressive to-do list in my head, I’ve been doing other things. Writing emails to old friends, writing a blog about avoiding work, etc. It’s great. I know I’ll probably spend most of tomorrow here anyway, so why work now?

It’s the same feeling I used to get when I knew I was going to be up late for an essay in college. Since I was going to be up half the night anyway, then I had all the time in the world. As soon as I accepted that bedtime was flexible and dependent on when the essay was finished, I had all night—an extra 8 hours—if I needed it. So I would go to the store, take a shower, reread all my research materials, rewrite my introduction five times, and then watch a few youtube videos. It wasn’t until about 2 a.m. that the sense of urgency would set in. I would realize that I was more than halfway through the night and less than halfway through my paper.

A similar feeling will creep up on me tomorrow afternoon. I’ll realize that I’m more than halfway through the weekend and less than halfway through my grading and already burnt out. I know this, I recognize this, I can predict this, but for some reason I’m still unable to bring myself to actually work on anything useful today. I am, and always have been, and mostly likely always will be, a serial procrastinator. I’ll procrastinate anything I don’t feel like doing, from grading papers to eating if I think it’s going to take work.

On an unrelated note, I just finished the Hunger Games trilogy. I liked it, and I’m glad I own it. But the main character reminded me of a less self-sacrificing, more trash-kickin’ kind of Bella Swan. Unsure why anyone would love her, tortured by her insecurities, and yet beloved by all and adored by both the handsome men, who are willing to put up with her inability to choose between them because they’re so in love with her. Now, in Katniss’ defense, unlike Bella, who started insecure and obtuse, Katniss starts out relatively happy and competent. Her life has been hard, but bearable. Then, life tortures her into a complete mess. I don’t blame her for being unable to make decisions and having destroyed self-confidence after that. So, in conclusion, I like Katniss better than Bella, and Gale and Peeta are both cooler than Edward and Jacob.

The end.