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Motivation

The main takeaway from today's problem-solving session for 5.13 (Organic Chemistry II) was my instructor's motivational words. She reminds me of my high school biology teacher because she is middle-aged and acts like a strict yet caring mom because she cares about everyone doing well in the class. It's good that 5.13 here isn't treated like a weeder class. She said that if you want to stop feeling bad all the time, do something to stop feeling bad. For instance, do more practice problems so you stop feeling scared about the 5.13 midterm because a lot of practice builds confidence. Even if we may not do that well, at least we will know that we tried our best. There would be no more brooding over the possibility of doing better by living up to one's potential. I know that what she said sounded obvious and not unique, but it sparked something inside of me. For the past few months, I have been feeling bad about how bad I am at time management compared to other people and how I am often behind on everything and procrastinate. She said that people should stop pitying themselves because that's not going to make the situation better. Instead, people should observe the excellent students around them and follow what they are doing. 

I notice I have the tendency to whine and complain about life all the time when it doesn't really change anything. I don't want to be an emotional and mental burden on others around me when my peers probably have the same problems as me or they have more urgent concerns like family issues. To be honest, just portraying myself as someone who can't even do the basic things that good students do like having good time management and self-discipline isn't attractive. It doesn't make others have a good impression of you and not really trust you to handle tasks that require more responsibilities. In other words, it makes people think you aren't that reliable. 

 know this sounds really stupid, but a recurring sentence I had in my head during the fall semester is that severe procrastination and poor time management are really unsexy. It doesn't make people put you on a pedestal or admire you a lot for being a good role model. What it does instead is it makes people think you haven't fully matured yet to take proper care of your general well-being, academically and professionally. It is possible that someone is trying their best to have good time management, but is overcommitted to many things so they have a hard time devoting a lot of time to schoolwork. This isn't a time management issue, but rather an overscheduling issue. I don't know if others really care about how good their partner is at these skills, but that is probably one reason people will be hesitant to like me. Of course, my main motivation to minimize these tendencies isn't to set a good image for others to like me, but rather for myself. 


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