The End is Near

So occasionally I come across difficulty in selecting a topic for my Sunday evening blog post, often due to my absence of brain power (however much was there from the start remains unknown). As a solution, I ask my girlfriend at times to suggest a few topics for me to cover. The other day I asked her to look at my blog to read one of my posts, and of course she complained about the absence of color and life! To me this is a funny generalization between males and females. We guys generally don’t care what the damn thing looks like, as long as the content is there. But many women will spend excessive (in my eyes) amounts of time and effort to the detail of things, like a blog. A bit unrelated to what I’m going to talk about next, but I just found it somewhat humorous.
Anyway, more importantly, there are eight days left of class. Eight! I cannot believe how quickly this semester has gone by, let alone this year. I feel that I have changed quite a bit since August, and reflecting on that is interesting. When I first came here to UNC, I was all about the “I love college” attitude. I had no real desire to actually work hard to earn my grades. I mean, I was still a good student and did my work, but I definitely procrastinated a lot. I cared about my grades and put effort, but I never gave myself time to put my best effort into things. Plus, it was often painful to sit down in the library on a beautiful day and work. It was almost unnatural for me to look at my weekends as time for studying and preparing for the week ahead. I mean, who honestly had to do that in high school? I know I didn’t. I was accustomed to tests and papers that required minimal analysis and application, with much more regurgitation than anything. So you can only imagine what I thought of my initial tests and papers here at Carolina.
Time management is what really killed me and my study habits were poor. I got caught in a cycle that is not easy to avoid. I would stay up late trying to finish work due the next day, and would be tired during class the following morning. This would leave me restricted on my learning and would cause me to go to my room to nap or relax instead of reviewing or completing work ahead of time. This is a vicious cycle and it is really difficult to get out once you are in it. I would relate it to quicksand.
Also, coming to an environment with an incredibly large student population, most of which are among the brightest in the world, was intimidating at first. Walking by the library on a Friday night and seeing students working away made me feel guilty and questioning of whether I was working as hard as I should be. Confidence is a huge factor in academic performance that I lacked last semester. As a result of my cycle I got a lower-than-expected grade in Chemistry (shocking right?). I let this get to my head and it made me want to avoid the subject altogether. This lack of practice and the mental intimidation produced a bad result, but ultimately taught me a lot.
Following the Fall semester, I realized that while I’m at school I should be doing everything I can for my classes. Lengthy breaks will follow and reward my hard work. Practice makes perfect, and without the proper time to sit down and practice, success will be limited. The number of people who can sit through a class without paying attention or working hard and still receive good grades is rare, extremely rare. Those people always pissed me off.
I’m still learning as the semester winds down, but I feel that I have come a long way from last semester in terms of balance and managing my collegiate lifestyle. Fortunately, as cliché as some may find it, I have really taken to heart the concept that no matter what you do, just be happy and that is the best thing you could ever ask for. With this in mind, I will still strive for my goals, but I’m going to enjoy my ride in life as well.