Sometimes schoolwork makes me feel like this
Every once in a while, life throws you a curve ball. Sometimes you can see it coming and execute a well-timed duck, and sometimes it hits you right in the face. And then other times, life throws you about ten curve balls and they all pelt you at the same time like a cruel game of gym class dodgeball.
Nice.
In college, this kind of thing tends to happen, but instead of balls thrown unexpectedly in your face, it’s usually deadlines, papers, assignments, meetings and group work. And sometimes those things come along one at a time, and sometimes they all wash up on you at the same time like an oceanic wave of academic hysteria. Situations such as this tend to sneak up on you, usually due to an imbalance of priorities. Not necessarily in a bad way, but sometimes clubs and activities require a little bit of your TLC and pull your attention away from school work. It happens. Or maybe you’re balancing the heck out of your life and it happens anyway.
When something like this happens to me, my mother (whom I inevitably call in times of academic crises) always reminds me to just get it done. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, and it doesn’t have to always be your best work. Does that give you an excuse to produce pure garbage and expect to be showered in glory for it? No, absolutely not. But sometimes when you’re knee-deep in academic sludge that all happens to be due at the exact same time, you can’t spend hours upon hours upon hours perfecting the most perfect Spanish essay ever written.
Perfection is a truly ludicrous thing to aspire to, and I don’t think that everything you ever do has to be a reflection of your absolute best work. Sometimes that just isn’t what is available to you. If something just isn’t serving you, there’s nothing wrong with doing what you can with it and moving on. Just getting it done can be one of the best things you can do for yourself.
Moms give good advice. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the whole ‘older-and-more-experienced’ thing. Who knows. The idea of just doing something and moving on seems really simple, but it’s helped me cope with a lot of frustrating things in my academic lifetime. So thanks, mom, for helping me keep my head on straight, and hopefully, maybe this can help some of you too.
And with that, I leave you with an inspirational piece of additional advice from the great Ron Swanson: “Give 100%. 110% is impossible. Only idiots recommend that”.