Advice From a Bacon-Eater

The topic this week required us to write a speech as if we were Juniors giving advice to our little sister class. I admit that I cheated a little bit. I simply traveled into the future, listened to myself give advice to a class full of Freshmen, wrote it down, and then posted it as this week's blog. Genius, if I do say so myself. Wait, is that plagiarism if they're ideas I haven't thought of yet? Oh well.

Hello, you tiny minions...I mean bright, young little sisters. I have been brought in to speak to you because I am an expert. An expert on what? No questions, please! I'm sure that now you are in college, your cute little brains are overloading on all the new experiences you're... experiencing. Don't worry, mine did too. My first few weeks at Converse I did things like forget to do homework, forget to get up in the morning, forget to go to class, forget I even had a class... and you know what? It turned out okay. I just had to make myself not stop trying even though I was completely mortified that I had overslept two hours for the second time (Don't look at me like that, I was sick). You know the key to not oversleeping, and not getting sick? Sleep when you're supposed to, no matter how attractive the new episode of Whatever Tv Show Kids Watch These Days is. And don't start watching an awesome new series right before something important like a test or a recital. It doesn't end well.

Do you know what's just as important as sleep? Don't raise your hand, it was a rhetorical question. It's practice, and not just practicing so your lesson teacher won't yell at you. You need to practice your musicianship skills, like hearing different intervals and reading rhythms. If you don't, you will have no idea what's happening in class. Also, if you take piano, practice that too! I don't care how good you are at reading music, there isn't enough time in class to get all the way through an entire unit before it's your turn to play for Dr. Weeks.

Well, there's everything I learned from my mistakes laid out for you so you can ignore me, make the same mistakes, and then try to teach your future Littles how to avoid self-inflicted suffering their Freshman year. But I suppose part of learning is figuring it out for yourself.

P.S: Bacon is good.

My Love/Hate Relationship With Sleep

Don't you ever look at your clock at midnight and wish there were about five extra hours in the day? No? It's just me? Oh well.

The fact that I am frequently awake at midnight testifies to my biggest problem with time management: I am not very successful at sleep scheduling, or sleeping in general. I don't really understand why I have this problem, because I adore sleep. Sleep is good. But sleep is more appealing to me in the morning, it seems. However, with 8:30 classes every weekday, sleep in the mornings just isn't working out for me. But no matter how many times I wake up in the morning groggily cursing my too active mind and campus-wide wi-fi, I can't keep myself from clicking on "one last YouTube video". It's as if I enjoy intentionally torturing myself.

Procrastination is also a huge problem for me. I am really very lazy. You haven't seen the full effects of my laziness yet, because I'm still riding the "first few weeks of school" high where I feel I am the master of all homework and nothing will ever stand in the way between me and my A plus! This is a lovely effect that falls upon me every new school year, but it's already fading (note the time this was posted).

I really haven't found an effective way to deal with my self-imposed insomnia; the call of the electronic world is too strong. I have found ways to semi-deal with procrastination (I say semi because they definitely aren't working for this particular assignment). Fortunately for me, most of my homework consists of worksheets or work that can be done on my computer. This means I can find a lovely place to sit outside and work, which usually increases my productivity. Or I just get distracted by a butterfly and a really itchy bug bite. Sometimes, if I have work to do on the computer, I can fool myself into thinking that because I'm doing something with technology, I'm having fun (this works particularly well with MacGamut). These are (obviously) not fool-proof methods for dealing with my time management problems, and I'm always on the look out for advice (especially for the sleeping thing).

If I get really desperate, I eat some bacon. Just had to throw that in there.