But I will not do a poor job. In fact, the slight dropping in standards is perhaps a good thing, bringing them down from the excessively high, inefficient, perfectionistic levels, to reasonable levels.
Tomorrow will be interesting. I realize I've been getting into a later bedtime, later waking up routine, and I think the only way to change that is to force myself to wake up early, so I'll actually be tired at night. But that may affect my ability to focus a bit.
However, sleep levels have little effect on scholastic performance, says a meta-study on the subject. Fascinating. But perhaps not showing the whole story. Just like exercise having only a small positive effect. But that's only looking academically. It perhaps has a much larger effect, in terms of school being a positive experience, and life in general. And I have suspicions that there are a lot of factors that have minor effects on academic performance but major effects on other areas, novel thinking, fundamental behavioral chance, perhaps moral or metacognitive development. Prefrontal lobe stuff.
An interesting and encouraging discovery: I seem to be getting much better at anti-procrastination self-talk and behavior.
The normal procrastination voice goes like this:
"Oh no! Not this work again! I have no idea what I'm doing! I don't want to do this! Suck! Waaaaaaaa!"
And the new voice replies, "The pain you are feeling is from avoiding doing the work. It will almost entirely go away once you start. Unless you keep telling yourself it's awful and you're horrible at it. But you can remedy that by reminding yourself that almost nobody really knows what they're doing. Most people who you think are doing just fine, are in the very same situation as you, feeling like they don't really know what to do. Just make it up. Do the best you can think of, it will probably be fine, and if something's not good, you can fix it. Chill, don't worry. Experience has shown this to be an effective solution, for just about everything. Maybe don't use it for surgery or flying a plane, but otherwise, you're golden."
And then I give myself very frequent breaks, and I end up fine.
But I am getting damn tired of day after day in front of a computer screen. This does not feel like a productive use of my life. It's getting me street cred, and papers I can wave at potential employers, and the ability to produce more such papers. It makes me feel like I'm turning into this cow animal that chews on book pages and eventually poops out theses and research papers, not really aware or caring about the process, and the end results feel about as meaningful.
Except cows are pretty chill and this process is stressful, so the cow in this analogy is maybe hyped up on coffee.
But it's not helping me teach very much, so my patience is wearing thin, as the fatigue mounts. Thus the gradual dropping in personal standards.
I feel no guilt about this because I'm pretty sure this thesis (maybe there's a reason the plural of the word rhymes with feces?) experience, accompanied by growing apathy spurred on by mental emotional and physical exhaustion is a requirement to be accredited as a graduate school, and thus my experience is not just typical but mandated.
Anyways, it's actually quite late now, and this has become a long post. Erm. Definitely have gotten out of my nice early rising routine. Well, that will change tomorrow, when my subconscious realizes I won't just let it sleep in anymore! Mwahahahaha! I will rule it with an iron fist!
-I Out
(Perhaps I should take a break from writing papers after tomorrow?)
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