"Employers demand these skills." [ Wednesday, December 11, 2002 | 10:04 a.m. ] Since I last posted, Sunday afternoon, it’s been up and down, crests and troughs. I followed my blog post by catching up on reading everyone else’s blogs/journals for a couple of hours. Eventually, I gave up on working entirely, and I called Sean to see if he wanted to do anything. Now, he’d been doing this thing in the last couple of weeks where he said he wouldn’t see me if I hadn’t finished my work report. The last time he tried it, he broke down and came over anyway. This time, however, he held his ground. He even said he’d cancel his Monday-night plans with the guys so he could take me out for a celebratory dinner after I’d finished my report. I told him not to do it. He said he’d do it anyway, first thing the next morning, so I really had to finish the report. Now, I was 100% certain that it wouldn’t be done by then, so this distressed me. I did the whole, "Okay, fine, whatever," thing and got off the phone. Everything distressed me. I thought about the report, and it just got worse and worse. In every essay or written project like this, I have one absolute worst moment, a point where I hit rock bottom. This was that moment. It just overwhelmed me. I collapsed in bed sobbing, which continued uncontrollably for half-an-hour. Then my mom came home and I was able to pull myself together quickly. (I didn’t want any witnesses to my ‘episode’.) I talked to mom briefly, and then went to bed. I was asleep before seven o’clock. On Monday morning, I got up at five and started looking though some things. All it did was bring home the point that my original premise and arguments were just plain wrong. I went off to work feeling a little discouraged, but I had a full day of stuff to do, so I didn’t think about it. I was going to call Sean at work to tell him that I wasn’t finished (duh!) and that he shouldn’t cancel on his friends, but he called me first. He’d decided, apparently, that his original strategy for getting me to do my work wasn’t, well, working, so he went to plan B. After work, we went over to my place and picked up my laptop, then he bought my favourite food, McDonald’s, and we went back to his place to eat and work. I did try to do something, but it was a lot like what went down in the morning. Plus, every time he left the room I’d stop working and just lie there. Seemingly, though, it was at least as much as I would’ve done if I’d been at home that night. It certainly cheered me up, which could only be helpful. Yesterday went a little better. I wasn’t given anything to do at work, so I was able to work on my report all day. After staring at my outline and wondering how the heck I could tinker my original, flawed topic into something workable, I finally scrawled some notes down on paper, then just started typing. The floodgates were opened. The problem I have is somewhat akin to writer’s block, so when there’s something coming out, I go with it. I churned about 2000 words before I left in the afternoon. A lot of it’s absolute crap, and it’ll have to be hacked up, then carefully stuck together into something coherent, but I’ve still got a section and a half of the body of the report to write. It can only be 1500 to 2000 words, so I’ll be able to cut out the worst parts. I figure I can just keep writing at work today, like I did yesterday, and I should be able to get something written for every section. Then I can pare that down to the right length, and conjure up a purpose for the report. The summary should be easy, since it’s just a summary, and I’ll get my memo of submittal from last term and update the details to make it fit this term. With two days and two nights to go, that seems quite doable. I should be working on it now, though. I get a lot, lot more done at work than at home. Case in point: yesterday, after I left the office, I did nothing. At home I played Solitaire for a bit, talked on the phone with Sean for over an hour, then played a little more Solitaire until I fell asleep, before ten. And now I’ve just written almost 800 words that could’ve gone into my report. I’ve only got so many words in me, after all. Okay. I’m doing it. May Quellious be with me.

Work Report Blues [ Sunday, December 8, 2002 | 3:40 p.m. ] It's that time of term again. My supervisor expects to have my work report in her hands on Friday. Friday the 13th. I'm going back to work for these guys again in the summer, too, so I can't screw this up. When I hit the one-month-to-go mark, I decided on a rough schedule of two weeks for research, one week for writing, and one week for editing and polishing. Two weeks passed. That's fine, I thought, I don't need to do research. Now I'm down to five days, and all I've got is a very rough, broad outline and the first paragraph and a half of the analysis section. My biggest problem, though, is my subject itself. Basically, I just sort of made up most of the points in my notes based on my own assumptions and what other people said. Looking through things now, some of seems not to be true. At very least, I will have to manipulate the facts quite a bit, or choose examples that are not at all representative of the whole picture. One might argue that with so little done, I might as well just start over... Actually, my real problem is my lack of reference materials, of real information. I can say all sorts of stuff, but when it comes down to it it's nothing more than my opinion without evidence to back it up. They're expecting a research essay, not an editorial. And all I'm doing right now is wasting time. Time I don't have to waste. I was hoping to get a lot of work down this afternoon so that I could go out in the evening. I was hoping to have everything done well before Friday, because Sean's taking me out for dinner on Thursday, plus, I don't want this to take up any more of my time. I've always had this problem, though. In elementary school, I had to do book reports. I'd sit there with my book and my paper and my pen, and I just couldn't do them. I'd try and try, but I couldn't think of anything to write. I can remember several occasions when I broke down crying. They're some of my worst memories from those years. I went through the same thing all through my six years at Havergal. The handful of nights when I felt almost suicidal were all, each and every one, over essays that were due the next day that I hadn't been able to start. For a couple of years, I handed most things in late. Eventually, I stopped doing that, but it wasn't because the problem had gone away. With practice, I'd become much better at doing things at the last minute. I could start an essay at six a.m. the day it was due, and finish it during lunch. Still, I remember the OAC English essay that was due "before the end of the term". I handed it to my teacher at Carol Service. I'd finished and printed it only minutes before. And in university, I still have the problem. I won't rehash the stories of the PHIL 215 essays this summer, as I relayed them in great detail at the time ("I've got an essay due in fourteen hours that I haven't started."), but I screwed myself pretty bad. On my first work term, with nothing but time on my hands, I started my work report with two months to go, and finished most of it, but left the final touches until the morning it was expected in. ("That work report ain't gonna finish itself.") I had it bound that day at lunch. In my first term at Waterloo, I thought I'd seen some positive changes in myself. For the first time in my life, I was actually working. I was on top of my assignments, I was getting things done, and when I had to sit down and get some work done, I could do it. Later, I realised that nothing had really changed but the circumstances around me. I'd always done just what I needed to get by (by which I mean achieve my goals, not just pass or continue on). In university, things were harder; the stakes got higher, and I did what I had to to keep up. By second term, though, it became clear that that's all I was doing. I was surviving. Well, congratulations, Ter-Rat. You sat down to work around noon, and now it's three thirty. The sun's almost starting to set. I guess I'll get to work now, or maybe just beat my head against a wall for a while. P.S. Speaking of beating one's head against a wall, I loved the new Harry Potter movie. P.P.S. Happy birthday, Jacq! sometimes it's just that nothing seems worth saving i can't watch her slip away i won't let you fall apart