Missing: one Work Ethic (his name is William). REWARD if found…
O dear.
Tomorrow, at 0930h, I have an exam. And I know for a fact I’m going to fail it, because – as a result of the Famous Housing Crisis of 2005, I was too busy stressing, hiding from bastardy housemates, looking for a new place to live and moving boxes to go to any of the lectures or seminars I had in the November-onwards part of last term.
All things considered, that’s still pretty much my fault; if I’d had the guts to actually put aside the rest of the trouble I was in at that time, and make it to the lectures, then I’d not be in the fix I am now. But I didn’t, so here I am, less than 24-hours to go, and I know that I will not be able to answer any question on the paper in anything looking like a meaningful way.
Strictly speaking, therefore, the proper course of action for me to be taking is the one in which I panic, and try to cram furiously.
Can I work up enough enthusiasm to do that effectively? Can I bollocks. Hell, I know I’m going to fail pretty much whatever happens; there’s no way I can get up to speed in time. So why stress about it?
If I were, for example, Sundeep, and had got myself into this situation, then I’m pretty sure I’d be staying up all night getting as much reading as possible done before it’s absolutely too late. Probably, that’s what I ought to be doing myself, but I’m just feeling no motivation whatsoever now.
Thing is, I cannot get nervous about exams. Despite the fact that, in the rest of my life, I’m a total wuss, and I stress about Ruth going off to work in case she’s knocked down by a lorry and killed, I can’t make myself get interested by exams.
Partly, I think, that’s because I cannot revise. Name a method of revision, and I’m betting you that I’ve tried it, and got nothing out of it. Re-reading? No use. Making lots of notes and condensing and condensing them until I’ve killed off a whole Big Mac’s worth of Amazonian rainforest? I should be so lucky. Making crackly tapes of things I need to learn and playing them in my sleep? I slept really badly, butI didn’t learn a bean.
There’s precisely one exam I ever got nervous about in my entire life, and that was the 11-plus I did to get into AGS. And mostly I was nervous about that because I was taking it at the school (I ended up in S7, actually) and I’d never been there before, which was unnerving.
That’s it. GCSEs? Yeah, I did ’em. But I was never worried about doing them. I wasn’t even worried afterwards, because, once you’ve done the exam, the result you get is what you get. It’s even less use stressing over that than it is stressing over the exam in the first place.
A-levels… Just didn’t bother me. Even Biology which I knew I was going to make a mess of, because Coff and Ben Michael lured me away from the lessons, I wasn’t really bothered.
O, sure, sometimes, up to a fortnight or so before the actual exam, I’ll worry that I’ll make a mess of it, but never for long enough to make me actually do anything about it. And in this case, not even that, really.
I know that I will never pass this exam. In the summer, I will have to re-sit it, and that will be a phenomenal pain in the arse, and will probably be both costly and a logistical nightmare. Tomorrow, I’m going to go and sit in the Great Hall, make a total cock-up of the whole thing, and go back to Hafan and have a cup of tea, because, really, what else is there to do?
Nothing can change the fact that at the point last term went down the tubes, I stopped going to lectures. As a result, I just don’t have the base of information on which to construct a realistic argument, even under the lack-of-critics-happy friendly environment of a closed-book exam.
But I just can’t work up any real interest in it. I’m going to fail, which is a fact. If I don’t, then it’s a bloody miracle, but it won’t be down to a late surge on my part, because, firstly, my brain doesn’t work like that, and rejects and attempt at self-induced knowledge in favour of someone better qualified telling me and me scribbling it down furiously in A12, and, secondly, I have not got, and possibly never have had, the sort of personality that allows me to get excited about exams, or deadlines, or work in general.
It’s a major, major failing. Most people who know me fairly well are probably aware that I’m capable of pouring as much energy and effort as I can muster into something just as long as it’s something that’s either captured my interest or which I’ve reason to care about, and that, I think, is probably a good quality.
Where it goes arse-over-tit, however, is when I try to make myself have an interest in something – like, say, doing an essay. My brain’s not that stupid, it can tell when I’m trying to put one over on it, and I just get dispirited with the whole thing and lose the will to do anything at all. That is most certainly a very bad quality…
…But it doesn’t appear to be one I can do anything about, and I don’t know why. I’m just not built right. Ruth, somehow, is not only able of getting involved with pretty much any bit of work she’s got to do, but feels bad about it if she hands it in and feels she’s not put as much effort into doing it as she could have. I don’t know how she does it, but I wish I was able to do it as well.
I am, basically, an incredibly lazy person, and tomorrow I will fail an exam, and will that teach me a lesson about doing more work in future, and always going to lectures regardless of other issues?
Don’t be so naive. I wish it would, but it won’t. I’m lazy and pretty much usless when it comes to work, and for all my life would be much easier if I only had a bloody work ethic, I haven’t got one, and I don’t know where to get one. Bollocks.
Still… I wonder if hypnotherapy could fix me up?
Comments
If it makes you feel any better I find myself in a simular situation, though for different reasons, and wont be staying up all night. Also I’m in the same room at the same time as you tomorrow so we could always have a race to see who could reach the door first after 45 minutes.
The method I use is to get the notes and walk around reading them out loud, then repeat them all out load, then see if you can say them without reading the paper. Mostly good for equations, but I used it for my English revision back in college and didnt do *too* badly.
The downside of course is you look like a pillock and piss off everyone around you, but meh.
Like I suggested try doing:
Question 1 – Rosetti ‘Goblin Market’
Question 2: Holmes and Keats.
U can swap Goblin Market and Holmes if you want.
I would post a sympathetic comment, but what use would that be?
Don’t give up! Centuries of debate over nature versus nurture must mean that both contribute at least something to the final product; why not err a little on the side of nurture on this one and try to force yourself to do some work (it’s not even half a year to go, now) rather than resign yourself to your ‘natural’ laziness?
Get off your arse and make yourself go to lectures. Revising is crap, as anyone can testify, but going to lectures is about as easy as it gets. I would recommend setting a target to go to 90% of lectures, but as a human being I know that you, or I, would keep letting themselves off and promising that they will use up their first 10% in the first week, and then making more excuses as time goes on, like “well, the first week was introductory, so it doesn’t really count towards my 10%”, until you eventually get to “well, I’ve already missed my target by 40%, why bother?” Tell yourself you’re going to all of them. Which, incidentally, you are.
A little bit of work now will make your life much easier later. This is probably your final academic qualification, the top line of your CV, not nestled under any other better qualification as it A-levels and GCSEs can nestle safely beneath it.
As for revision, the best method is definitely the note-condensing one, or even straight note copying-out. The problem isn’t the technique: it’s forcing yourself to do it. If you write out your notes two or three times by condensing, you can’t fail to memorise at least some of them!
That said, good luck. If by some miracle they do ask the right questions and you get a decent pass, then all the better. If not, a fail is better than a crap pass because they’ll make you resit and it will pull your marks up overall. Right?
Sorry to be almost utterly heartless, but cruel moralising is what friends are for.
My two cents.
first off, the exam and your personal situation. Go and talk to tutors now, unless you already have, and explain all those things. They should be sympathetic. If not then you’ve lost nothing.
Point the second: I agree with Statto in that he says “just get on eith it”. God, and almost everyone else, knows that I was incredibly lazy but now that I have a job that I will lose and that I get paid for attending I have more motivation ot get up and go. If I’d had that a couple of years ago things may have gone very differently.
On a related note I have no advice on revision techniques ;-)
I have the same issue concerning motivation with regards to things I need to do and things I want to do, or things that other people want me to do. I’ve come to view it as a problem in education but that it won’t (I hope) if you get a job that you enjoy. If you can find a passion for something you get paid to do then you’re laugjing. Otherwise you may have to learn that whole get up and go. It’s useful but if I could do without it I would.
I’ll close with the hope that the exam went well and the not-quite-a-promise that things will turn out all right.
Love. Hugs. Respect. Compassion.
Aye, the going to lectures thing worked fine last term, to be fair. It only buggered up when it got to the stage at which I tried not to leave my room in case I ended up running into housemates.
After that I was actually moving things, which is where it all fell down, because by the time I’d sorted all that out and got the utter collapse out of the way, it was already the last week of term.
But next term ought to be no problem, unless Hafan starts to gang up on me, at which point I shall just wander past and firebomb them en route to the lectures…
In the post, you told us you have no work ethic, and now you tell us instead that it was entirely justifiable and a pure result of unfortunate circumstances, before finally saying
If the post is true, don’t talk yourself round like that; we’re not schoolteachers and you’re not a naughty schoolboy so we don’t want excuses. If the subsequent comment is true, then stop scaring us with lack-of-work-ethic-affirming ‘blog posts already!
I know my moralising quotient is somewhere between that of a priest and a mother.
Incidentally, what are you meant to do about the resit given that presumably they’re not giving you any more lectures on the subject?
And…err…how did it go?!
It’s not an excuse at all! I said right at the start the problem wasn’t simple laziness:
(that blockquote had better work… :s)
…It’s just that I had a vague feeling I ought to be more concerned about the impending exam-ness than I was capable off, so I led into vague rumations on the fact I have intense trouble working up enthusiasm for some things, whereas other things I can get fired up about in three seconds!
I said both that I have no work ethic and that the problem was a result of unfortunate circumstances: problem 1 was that I couldn’t get any enthusiasm up for doing revision, problem 2 was that I needed to because of missing the lectures! :p
…But I think, in some ways, it went OK. Certainly I’ve had worse exams, and one of those was GCSE maths, which I inexplicably passed!
Certainly it seemed to go better than expected, so now it’s mostly a case of waiting until the results come out, and seeing what needs to be done…
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