James's Place

It’s that time of year again. Yeah that’s right, all us kids are going back to school. I’m heading into my fourth year of undergrad at Carleton University. This is the year I do my honours thesis as well to complete my program requirements for Cognitive Science.

Around this time last year, I was a lot more distressed. Even after three years of university I still felt unprepared for the coming workload and all the preoccupations of university courses. Just thinking about it made me want to curl up in a hole somewhere and hide. I knew I could do the work, but the thought of actually doing it filled me with dismay.

Well it turns out the amount of work thrown at me (mostly through essays and barely comprehensible scientific papers) was almost as bad as I had imagined. I was averaging 3-4 small essays per week with larger ones thrown in every so often and I was sometimes reading through 80 pages. It felt like about twice the workload of the previous year. Now by no means is this extreme or even unusual for university students, but to me it was a damn lot of work.

I had been used to cooling off periods between assignments where I could reassemble my motivation before plunging into the next one. But with my arrangement of deadlines it was a near constant schedule of attend classes, read a bunch of papers, write up an assignment, day in day out. Weekends were spent guilting myself into reading far enough into next week so I maintained a decent sleep schedule. It sometimes worked.

But after the year was over, something interesting had happened. I had absolutely had it with writing papers and seriously reading anything… and I felt no dismay about the next year. That feeling has persisted up until the start of this term. It’s like I’ve determined that last year was the worst it could possibly get, and there’s nothing I couldn’t get through for this year. Throughout all the assignments, I had focused my worries (and sometimes hatred) on the problem at hand and I stopped thinking about future assignments. Or rather, I stopped generating distressing feelings when thinking about future assignments.

Added on to that, I had found an honours supervisor and a possible research topic by the end of last term, two very big mental monoliths that had loomed over me for most of the year.

This year I know the workload will be high; there’ll be the extra pressure of doing my honours thesis plus the normal level of assignments for fourth year courses. But the cognitive obstacles have grown smaller. Everything seems less significant, like the monsters in your closet that eventually dwindle in size and disappear. Famous last words maybe.

Well, here comes another year of university. It sort of feels like a piano hanging over my head, but it always feels like that after being out of the classroom for a while. Going into 3rd year, I’m accustomed to what the workload will be and the general structure of university courses. I know it won’t be nearly as bad as it feels like, certainly not as bad as the rapidly increasing locker dreams that happen around this time of year.

It’s just the general thought of all the work, attending classes, doing efficient time management to spread out the workload, trying to do well in all my courses, it takes up most of my cognitive capacity. It weighs on me so that little stuff like cleaning off a desk becomes a nigh impossible task, the motivation just isn’t there. Maybe it’s tied into my reluctance for multitasking. I’ve always preferred doing only one project at a time. 5 courses feels like 5 projects, plus any administrative stuff on top feels like another. I’m not terribly motivated either and am well versed in the art of procrastination. But fortunately I’m interested in my degree program (and if you aren’t, get out now. Being happy in your chosen career is much more important than whatever your salary will be).

I’m studying Cognitive Science, which is a multidisciplinary field of work that fits my need for variety. It can take you lots of places. A lot of my CogSci teachers are linguists or phoneticians, a lot are psychologists, a few are computer scientists, some work in the math department. From what I’ve heard, graduating with a multidisciplinary bachelor in Cognitive Science is pretty advantageous since you’re attractive to a greater number of employers. But whether that’s true or not is of little importance to me. My philosophy right from first year was to go where it looked interesting. I want my career to be something that’ll get me out of bed in the morning.

But even if it’s cool stuff, you still need to work to learn it. So I’ll read the books, attend the classes, and practice good time management so everything gets done. At least so I’m not doing my assignments the day before the deadline. Two days should be enough, right?