My semester ends in a little over the week and it always comes with its ups and downs. Only a few more late nights until I get to relax for a few weeks, maybe a class or two where I’m calculated the lowest score I can get on the remaining assignments to get the grade I want, and several hours where I procrastinate the work I want to get done because I’m mostly scared of not living up to the expectations I set for myself. However, soon will come a few restful weeks where I get to reset my focus on how I would like to perform in the following term and also catch up on some hobbies and responsibilities I’ve been neglecting.

From my experience, I have had a long standing history of procrastinating until late into the evening or until the last couple of days before a large assignment or final due to a fear of not performing as well as I hope for myself. Could this just be an excuse I tell myself to protect my ego/sense of academic capabilities? For sure, if not mostly the case. But in these weeks and days leading up to whatever assignment or final I should be studying for, I often find myself reaching out to friends I haven’t spoken to in a while, submitting job-applications that’ll more than likely get denied, and completing odd-jobs that have been on my to-do list for far too long. Four days until an assignment that could improve my grade by an entire letter? Let me do a deep clean of my room. Six days until a final that will dictate if I’ll get a B and it’ll count towards my degree or if I’ll have to taken it again? Well, I rather write a blog post apparently. A university training that needs to be done by the end of the semester? Time to call friends I’ve done a poor job of reaching out to the past couple of months.

Right now I’m behind on three birthday presents, two birthday cards, two thank you cards, and I need to start writing and sending out my annual winter holiday cards to my family, close friends, and distance friends. I want to get a gift for my favorite custodial worker at my university, have maybe 12 friends I want to take time to have a meaningful call with, and also plan a trip or two for the coming semester. I should also give my room a good clean, especially before I leave to go home for a couple weeks and should plan my food accordingly so I don’t waste any perishables. I ideally would like to volunteer now, especially now that its getting colder out. There’s also a handful of friends I’d like to make time for in Baltimore, an extra shift at work I’d like to pick up so I can comfortably afford gifts I’d like to give my friends and family for Christmas, and a few going away and holidays parties that I’d like to attend.

Needless to say, there’s a lot of work/responsibilities I would like to address before the end of the semester that don’t even pertain to my schoolwork – I didn’t even mention the few parking tickets I need to pay off… I’m sure many people experience this same overwhelming feeling, especially closing out the fall semester as opposed to the spring. I personally associate the spring semester with rebirth than I do closing. Maybe its because I graduated every academic chapter in my life in the spring or maybe just because historically the spring is symbolically associated with rebirth. But the fall is a little weird, its overwhelming in the way you feel like you just cant keep your head above water. Like there’s always something else to do or address, the days are literally shorter and you can deeply feel the darkness that follows. Its draining socially, some people have strained families they return to during this time or are reminded of their distant relations with the influx of people posting their time with family. I have found fall endings to be much more stressful than the spring ones.

Anyways, I don’t have much to say. I’ve successfully procrastinated some literature reading and report writing progress by a few hours, greatly helped by my roommates distracting me for about a good hour to talk about literal nothing. I just knew I wanted to blog tonight so here I am. I unfortunately will probably think of a really good blog post in a couple days and be eager to write about it until I realize it’s only been a few days since my last post and then proceed to wait 2 months to blog again. Alas, here we are. I will finish out my semester then hopefully return to here with a more exciting blog post than just a thought dump over how I like to best procrastinate at the most inconvenient times and provide a laundry list of items I should easily be able to accomplish.

Love you, my few readers.