I have always been an autodidact. It’s why I am able to earn A’s without reading all the material coming my way in my classes. It’s helpful when you already know about a subject because you spent your free time reading about it years ago when you were delving into the said field at the time.
However, the one thing that being an autodidact didn’t help me with was time management. I struggled with perfection, which meant about 70% of the time I would delay working on personal projects. It was easy to do so. There was no external deadline hanging above me. Combining those three factors, projects that could have taken me a couple of days to finish took a week.
Now, with deadlines taking over my life, I find that perfectionism has been thrown out this quarter. In the previous two quarters, I spent doing the work ahead of time. I had returned to school with a level head determined to have a set schedule. What I didn’t know was that was still a cover-up to my procrastination.
Instead, this quarter has been different. It’s a month into the fall quarter, and tonight is the first time I feel like a student this quarter. For some reason, this quarter has been so unmotivating. I wait until the last day to get assignments done, which they do, and good grades are given.
I am learning that every quarter is going to look different, and I’m not always going to show up how I expect, so instead, I need to be flexible with myself. As long as I do the work, that is what counts. I also think something good is coming out of this quarter, and that is I haven’t overthought any of my assignments – hence better time management on assignments. I just do them, turn them in, and manage to get all or close to all points without the mental drain of overthinking.
Perhaps this quarter is how it should be, only with just a tad bit more motivation on not waiting to do assignments on the exact due dates so I have a bit less pressure of getting them done within a specified time. It’s the first time I am not procrastinating due to fear of perfection; rather, it’s that I have been burnt out. I took the summer quarter right after spring and went right into the fall quarter. But now, when I do assignments, I no longer overthink them and often will write a paper within an hour and turn it in, especially if the topic is familiar to me.
The only time I find myself overthinking an assignment is when I am tired and my energy is low. Then there is no saving me from sitting at the computer screen, straining to write out sentence after sentence, hoping it makes sense and wondering if it makes sense because I am too tired to understand if it makes sense.
Who knew that college would improve this side of me, where perfection rules and nerves take over. Instead, it is forcing me to just do the work and move on. Perhaps it’s also because I know the bigger picture, and that is perfect grades in the grand scheme of things do not matter all that much unless you plan on going into a competitive program or graduate school. I made the Dean’s list twice this year, not sure about this quarter as I have shifted my personal energy to other areas of my life that matter more to me than the Dean’s list.
Still, the results and feedback from my professors have been more than rewarding and freeing. It’s liberating to see that just doing the work without all the extra mental effort that was going into assignments in the previous quarters isn’t needed. Will this change? I don’t know, but I will ride this wave as long as possible.
The Broke College Student 
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