Sunday, April 26, 2009

Free Schedule = Low productivity

As much as I hate being stressed out with school work, I have come to realize that having a completely empty schedule is not the best atmosphere for that paper or project that you want to work on. This seems counter intuitive, I know. But it actually took me months to realize this... 

This weekend has been one of the freest weekends for me. All I had was an RA Spring Retreat, pretty simple Calculus problems, and a book to read for Paideia - Copenhagen. Considering how "free" my weekend was, I decided to do some extra studying on Physics to start preparing for the finals. But in spite of my incredibly light work load [compared to my work load in the past few weeks], I actually just fininshed my Calculus and Paideia assignments this Sunday night. I haven't even opened my Physics text book at all...

This has been a common pattern with days like Tuesdays and Thusdays, where I just have one or two classes. Because I have a "free" day, I initially think I'll be able to make a masterpiece of a paper or lab report that I have, but shockingly I find myself highly unproductive due to numerous distractions. At best, I just manage to start the paper or go halfway when I have actually had the whole day to work on it! So, from my experience so far, to work well on an individual project, I need other competing projects, some stress, deadlines, etc. That's why, when registring for classes, I decided to make my days equally full, so as to keep myself productive. 

Next semester looks like it's going to be interesting. I'll be taking Modern Physics [I'm actually pretty excited to learn about relativity], Linear Algebra, Honors 210: Ancient World [It's a class in Luther's Honors Core; pretty cool, too], and Intro to the Hebrew Bible. It also seems like I'll have a manageable workload.

Yesterday, RA's had a Spring Retreat. We played many interesting games, did some planning for the next semester, and finally got our room assignments. We also found out our co-RA's with whom we will be working. It turns out that not only am I remaining in my current hall next semester, but I am also staying on my current floor....

Have a good week!

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