Apathy, how we love thee
Nov. 18th, 2006 21:27![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillThe trouble with deciding not to get sucked into all-consuming stress by school is that every so often, you look up from the books and realize how little it all matters in the grand scheme of things.
There's a hundred different things I could be doing with my life, and here I are letting minutes slip by while I try to memorize equations for enzyme kinetics. I won't remember them after Tuesday; I'll have to review them to recall them for the final, in fact. I will never again have cause to think about them. It's utterly pointless, beyond the gist of what's happening in these reactions, and I already have a grasp of that from cell bio.
Why am I here?
It matters, in that I need to pass this class to advance my plan for myself. But that's awfully abstract. The only thing I know of that will keep me focused enough to read extraordinarily dry, boring material and memorize things by rote is the controlled panic of school stress. When I don't rely on that, motivation is hard to come by.
My prof is not very good, I don't have a well-defined set of things I need to know by Tuesday, and I hated rate laws the first two times around. I hate them more now. I keep thinking about all the ways I could be spending this time to make a difference in my life, and studying for this class doesn't make the list.
Taking care of myself has consequences, not all of them good. It's very tempting to take a hit from the stress pipe, just so that I can focus enough to do well on the exam. It means I'll have the flu for Thanksgiving, and I'll be too worn out to do the yardwork I want to do. But I'll pass the class.
I hate this kind of tradeoff.
There's a hundred different things I could be doing with my life, and here I are letting minutes slip by while I try to memorize equations for enzyme kinetics. I won't remember them after Tuesday; I'll have to review them to recall them for the final, in fact. I will never again have cause to think about them. It's utterly pointless, beyond the gist of what's happening in these reactions, and I already have a grasp of that from cell bio.
Why am I here?
It matters, in that I need to pass this class to advance my plan for myself. But that's awfully abstract. The only thing I know of that will keep me focused enough to read extraordinarily dry, boring material and memorize things by rote is the controlled panic of school stress. When I don't rely on that, motivation is hard to come by.
My prof is not very good, I don't have a well-defined set of things I need to know by Tuesday, and I hated rate laws the first two times around. I hate them more now. I keep thinking about all the ways I could be spending this time to make a difference in my life, and studying for this class doesn't make the list.
Taking care of myself has consequences, not all of them good. It's very tempting to take a hit from the stress pipe, just so that I can focus enough to do well on the exam. It means I'll have the flu for Thanksgiving, and I'll be too worn out to do the yardwork I want to do. But I'll pass the class.
I hate this kind of tradeoff.
