my fall09 term...

Last term, I had tried to push myself by taking 6 courses: 4 advanced maths, plus 2 easy courses. Really, it was 3 advanced math pluFs 3 easy courses, but I still managed to lose interest very quickly. The consequence was more than 5% drop in my term average. That's a pretty steep drop - an entire 30% worth of grade points in total.

This term, I am taking half a course more than last term, for a total of 6.5 courses. Now why would I want to repeat last term's experience?

Well, things are different this term. My mistakes last term were pretty obvious: I took many similar courses that were very easy to lose interest in, and had no discipline to keep focused. If I had either interest or discipline, I would have kept going. But no, I had neither. There were go tournaments to worry about and GEB to read, Monroe tapes to try and "The Rise and Fall of Nations" to flip through. Why the hell would I want churn out 4-6 assignments every single week?

Keeping myself interested

So this term, I put a lot of focus on selecting a wide variety of courses: 3 maths, and 3.5 non-maths. Each subject requires a different type of thinking, and a different type of work. Switching between subjects will definitely help in keeping myself interested. As well, doing things I've never done before - such as labs and tutoring (and marking?) should be more engaging. Scheduled fitness classes should help, too! Oh, and go club!

The discipline issue

I'm not very good at doing things I don't like. I can do it for a while, but I get bored very quickly, then productivity plummets. While getting around it by choosing to do things I'm interested is the right way to go, discipline will be useful in the long run. Of course, I want to push myself bit by bit, instead of bashing into a wall like last time.

The trick in dealing with my ADD, I think, is to allow for variation in my process. I find that any process I follow usually increase my productivity for the first 1-2 weeks. Then it would decrease my productivity for the next month, until I feel dejected, unmotivated, sick and tired of everything, and therefore quit. Is there a certain "average productivity" that I can't permanently go above? I don't know.

The other thing about this term is that I will be living with "ninja Raj". He has about 1.5x my course load, courses that are 2x as difficult as mine, and less resources than I have. If he can do it... well, what right do I have to fail?

The Plan

Here are all my commitments. Italic ones are things I'm not sure yet.

• 3 math courses in the 200-level
• cellular biology + lab
• german 2
• intro to cogsci
• tutoring 3 hrs/wk
• not sure if I got a marking job [EDIT: marking for Lin Alg 2 Adv ... even though I told them "NO ADV MATH PLEASE!!"]
  
• AGHS tournament, management and web stuff...
• HSU tournament will probably end up being in the fall, gotta talk to Jeff about it
• Yes Lilly, we will sign up for a fitness class!
• Jobmine
  

And strategies...

• Plan by the week. Have to-do lists, "themes" and personal goals that change from week to week. I like variation, so gotta work with that!
• Start following Raj's tips on emails. My email traffic shot up dramatically due to AGHS. It's now inefficient to let an email sit for a bit to think of a proper response (that isn't much better than the response I would have cooked up anyways). This way, I don't forget to respond to an email.
• Same "no delaying" philosophy for doing problems, reading, etc. Gotta kill that laziness.
• Keep up. Falling behind doesn't hurt my grades, but it does hurt both retention and motivation.
• Don't waste time... I tend to do that a lot.
• Of course... don't go nuts.
  

The most important thing for me is balance - which is why this term should be really fun for me. My schedule, my courses, extracurriculars... everything is very well balanced.

Anyhow, if I ever get lazy, I'll re-read this post.

If that doesn't work, I'll just have to think about what the ninja is doing in the tiny room next to mine.

End of Entry