Burned Out

Ugh ugh ugh. I need a hug.

Papers, proposals, outlines, actual writing, and reading is all piling up on top of me. Figuratively, but its' not long before my Complete Works gets frustrated and leads the rebellion - soon all of my books and paper assignments will find the opportune time (while I'm napping, I would assume) and actually climb on top of me, suffocating me. I would imagine they would do this in the pursuit of a less overwhelmed student to read and do them.

Major decisions loom in the distance - health decisions, wedding decisions, school decisions, living situation decisions, job decisions, and all of that piles up on top of me too. I was kind of hoping I was the kind of person who could block out every important decision until Plan was over, but alas Plan just sits on top of everything else.

Perhaps I will look back on this time and think, "What was I so stressed out about? It was a lot, but I totally got it all done!"

...or perhaps I'll think, "Jesus christ. I can't believe I ever thought that amount of stress and work was hard."

My head hurts.

31 Books

Here is a crappy picture of one of my desks right now. I have organized this desk as a place to put all the books and materials for one of my classes.

ONE. OF. MY. CLASSES.

I just counted, and there are 31 books in total on the desk. This is not counting the 6 books for this class that I have on my bookcase, the 1 book I've lent to someone, or the 2 books I've already returned to the library this semester.

So that's 40 books for one class, for one piece of my Plan, one month into my Junior 2 semester.  I mean, luckily I don't have to read all of them. Some will be very useful, and some won't be used at all - I'm told this is all part of the process. Still, it looks impressive when I write it out.

I've been having some Planic this past week; everything about it seems absolutely terrifying. The problem is when everything seems terrifying, I usually deal with it by avoiding doing anything at all costs. Not a particularly productive tactic. I suppose writing in this blog is another way to avoid things, but at least that's what it's for, so I don't feel as bad as when I watch the new season of The Office (which is terrible, and has been for four or five seasons).

I guess I'll clean my room some more now and make dinner, because neither of those things are scary.

p.s. Additionally, here is a crappy picture of what my bed looks like now that I've cleared off the desk to store my Plan books:

If I keep it like this, I suppose I won't be prone to nap as much...

Mild Progress = Sick

So I have a lot to report on the Plan front now that school is up and running.

I'm taking two classes, two Plan seminars, and one tutorial this semester: Shakespeare's Histories and Romances, The Craft of Fiction, Geraldine Plan Seminar, Paul Plan Seminar, and The World of Hamlet (Elizabethan theater history tutorial). Kind of a perfect semester. I've spent the last four days slowly digging myself back into the delightful, never-ending hole of academia. I've written some pages of fiction (not great, but a start!), written a short paper on King John (not great, but a start!), and I've somewhat figured out how to do conduct my historical research.

But.

Now I have a sore throat, fever, and swollen glands. What. The. Hell.

I just can't win, can I, body? You suck.

Back to drinking raspberry tea and reading. Because I can't talk/go to class.

Vermont is Shocking

I somehow find myself in a small but pleasant room in a strange white house on a tiny green hill surrounded by a plethora of trees encircled by mountains in the middle of nowhere.

Hello Marlboro.

It is quite disorienting to be back on campus. I keep wondering how the time went by so quickly, and what the heck I'm doing here already (RA training, primarily).

Each day I get a little more used to my beautiful, bizarre surroundings. Today I baked three loaves of bread and went running. That is the most functional I have been thus far.

I can't exactly describe how I've felt this week. Just odd. Unsure of where the time went. Floating around the paths of campus like I've stepped through a looking glass. Definitely socially awkward.

So, I do not have much to report on the Plan front. I ran into one of my advisers and spoke to him briefly - it went well. I haven't picked up a book since I've been here - 10 hours of training every day is pretty tiring. I have a goal tomorrow to take out a book from the library - Hamlet in Purgatory by Stephen Greenblatt.

Mostly though, I've been freaking out about everything and watching In the Loop on Netflix.

Alack! Shakespeare Isn't Everything

^This is the discovery I have made in the last month. 

Easing myself back into reading on a regular basis is not an easy thing. When I was sick for those delightful eight months, my brain felt clouded and dull. I read everything I needed to for school, but only because I've never missed a school deadline in my life, and to do so would be so painful that I made myself read and write. Still had to do extension, but at least I finished on time for that.

Anyway, reading critically is not easy. It's THE thing in college you have to learn to do well. Reading Shakespeare critically is really hard. But I'm a Shakespeare major so...alack, alack!

At the end of July, I tried to start seriously reading again. I poked through some Shakespeare biographies, a couple essays, and attempted to start a play. But my brain didn't want any of it, and I just felt more inadequate than before.

But then!

I picked up a book that had absolutely nothing to do with Shakespeare.  "When Everything Changed" by Gail Collins. It was a book I had been meaning to finish for a year. And you know what? Everything changed!

I delved into Gail Collins' account of the history of American women from the 1960s to the present. I ate up the history of the ERA, birth control and abortion, and feminism as a whole. It's an incredibly well-written book, and I really dug it. As I read, my brain seemed to shake out the cobwebs and slowly turn back on. I enjoyed reading again.

This made me realize that Shakespeare isn't everything for me. Yes, it's what I'm studying for my Plan, and for the past year at Marlboro I convinced myself that being a Shakespeare scholar was what I was destined for. But reading Ms. Collins' book reminded me that although I love reading and thinking about Shakespeare, I also just love reading and thinking. Literature in general. I'm finally understanding when my adviser told me that Plan is just something you like and study for a year. It isn't your life.

So while Shakespeare is definitely going to be important to me in the next year and a half, I'm going to try to balance myself and read some other books. The Bostonians; Inifinite Jest; more Gail Collins. We'll see what else makes it onto my reading list.

Four and a Half Weeks

That's all I have left in this summer break, and very little academic work to show for it. Yes, I spent a lot of time recovering my good health. Yes, I needed to relax. But it's probably time to kick my own butt again.

I started by ridding myself of Tumblr and Twitter. I did so because I realized two things in relation to those media sites.

Twitter realization: no one cares what's happening to me in 140 characters or less. If Tina Fey doesn't tweet, neither should I.

Tumblr realization: I realized instead of spending so much time re-blogging quotes about how I love to read, I should probably just be reading instead.

With those distractions out of the way,  my academic goals for the next month are:

1. Read all of "Will in the World". Take notes.
2. Read "Love's Labour's Lost". Take notes.
3. Read all of "A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599". Take notes.
4. Work on my "Cuddleslut" piece.
5. Pour over Aristotle's Poetics again. Take more notes.
6. Read a couple more Marjorie Garber essays.

These are modest goals, I just need to take them as seriously as the movies we've been making at camp. Considering most of the movies involve cows, this shouldn't be too hard.

But alack, it's always harder than it should be. Especially if your boyfriend just got a Hulu Plus account, and all you want to do is watch the first season of Once Upon a Time.

...And it's now been a month. Excellent.

Oops.

I've been meaning to write in this thing for a month straight - but lots of things got in the way.

First, I was reading. I finished a book recommended by one of my Plan sponsors - "The Tragedy of Arthur". I found it quite enjoyable except for the actual play it contained, which was just really boring, if authentic. It was helpful because it told me what NOT to do when I write my Shakespeare/reality crossover piece: don't try to write a fake Shakespeare play. Even if it's accurate, it probably won't be as good as Shakespeare's. Now I'm reading a couple things at once, which is a terrible idea.

Health stuff. I don't even want to think about how many times I've been to the doctor's in the last month. During my last visit, I joked to my regular M. D. that I might be becoming a hypochondriac. He replied, very seriously, "Well, that could be a possibility." I felt shame.

Tower. Even working half-day, it's still a tough job teaching Video to kids. Hopefully the next four weeks won't be as time-consuming, as they'll be specialty camp and won't require as much editing.

Boyfriend. He's across the country. He should just hurry up and get back here, because it's distracting to miss him.

Gym. Despite the health problems, I can FINALLY RUN AGAIN!!!!!!!! It's only about a mile a day right now, but it still feels amazing.

Cats. Cats take up so much of my time. I don't know why, but it seems to be an all-consuming thing.

So my Plan update is this -

I finished Tragedy of Arthur. I watched a movie called "Stage Beauty" about the first woman actor who played Desdemona. I've read bits and pieces of "Will in the World" and "A Year in Life of William Shakespeare, 1599". I've stared at my fiction writing from last semester, terrified myself, and closed the document. I contacted my interim fiction writing Plan sponsor for next year.

AKA, not nearly enough. Ugh. I miss Marlboro and the focus it provides.

Procrastinators Unite! Eventually...

(I should begin by saying that I am dedicated student. I turn in all my assignments on time (health permitting) and my grades and classes matter to me a great deal. That being said, I don't know a time when procrastination has not been something I've struggled with a little bit.) 

Dictionary.com says that procrastinating means "to defer action; delay: to procrastinate until an opportunity is lost."

And that's really what you lose, isn't it? An opportunity to spend your time in a more productive manner. That doesn't necessarily mean you always regret procrastinating though...

Procrastinating can take many forms, I have found. My top five ways and circumstances where procrastinating occurs are:

1. Internetting and tving. This category includes netflix, hulu, tumblr, twitter, and of course, facebook. And a billion other websites. Usually this results in a lot of tumblr re-blogging, and a few episodes of Secret Life of the American Teenager being watched and mercilessly mocked. It always results in me feeling incredibly guilty afterwards.

2. Socializing. This is when I don't want to do homework, so I find someone to hang out with instead. I can usually justify this one a bit more, especially since I'm a bit of a home-body and hanging out with people often validates me, and thus I can reason (to myself, in my own head),  "Look, I'm hanging out with someone! I am a functioning and valid member of society!" That probably went a lot deeper than you wanted it to. This is awkward. Go to the next one.

3. Organizing. When I really don't want to start whatever I'm supposed to be doing, I clean my room completely. I explain to those I feel accountable to, "I just need a clean space to work! Who can do work in a messy room? Stop looking at me like that. You're a cat, what responsibilities do you have?"

4. Napping. It is quite easy to justify this when you have mono (like I have for the past six months), but it can be done otherwise too: "How can I really concentrate when I'm this tired? This paragraph would sound a lot better if I was fully energized when writing it. Stop staring at me, cat. It's true."

5. Last but not least, there is a somewhat sneaky form of procrastination: productivity. Sometimes I'm not even aware this procrastination is actually happening, and then one day it hits me: I'm not really reading or writing what I know I'm supposed to be reading or writing. For instance, yesterday I was finishing up reading "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss. It's a fun read about the current state of punctuation, as well as a history and guide to each main punctuation mark. About 10 or so pages from the end, I found myself thinking, "Wow, I should really review Elements of Style before I start writing fiction again."And then I realized I have been reading about punctuation so I don't have to begin my fiction writing again, because I'm somewhat terrified of trying to. So, although reading "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" was helpful to my overall Plan and knowledge of writing, it was still, somehow, procrastinating. 

Which brings up a bigger question - why do I procrastinate and how can I become more aware of the specific reason I am procrastinating? 

Also, if anyone is reading this, do you have any particularly funny ways you procrastinate? How do you beat the procrastination bug?

Also, here's a clip of the Amanda Show that is relevant and hilarious: 

http://youtu.be/yoN2cXqRT7Q

Plogging (Plan blogging)

Exactly one week ago, I finally finished my Junior 1 semester. Medical extension was not the most fun thing ever, but at least it's over. Now - onto the main event: summer.

Last summer, I wanted to chill out and rest before my Fall semester began. This summer, I have a reading list too long to realistically accomplish, full of books on narration theory, Elizabethan history, and Shakespeare.

What changed from one summer to the next? Plan. Last week I created my first "Plan" folder on my computer, which is SO SO SO cool. And terrifying. For anyone reading this that isn't familiar with how Marlboro College works, all Juniors and Seniors participate in an undergraduate thesis project. We pick one (or two, or seven) things we want to work on for two years, and in our final year, it is the only thing we do work on. Other classes get pushed to the side, etc. Plan consists of at least one academic paper, an independent project (done without help from professors), and then depending on your major, a dance, a play, an experiment, more writing, etc. Whatever you want to do, just do it thoroughly. It's basically a grad school experience as an undergrad, and there's a lot of pressure surrounding it. 

I'm entering my Junior 2 semester, which means I have one semester to figure out exactly what I want my Plan to be. Right now I know this: my degree is going to be in LIT/Shakespeare and WRITING/Fiction. I'm going to try to prove Cleopatra IS a protagonist using Aristotle and Plutarch. I'm going to write a historical fiction short story. That's pretty much what I know, but I'm never-the-less incredibly excited about all of it.

BUT

 I am perfectly aware that I procrastinate. It happens. And I'm scared of procrastinating on Plan, because that's the thing about Marlboro - your success lies solely on your shoulders. You have to get it done - no one else is going to give you deadlines. 

So. I decided if I'm going to procrastinate on Plan (and I am), at least I could do it in a way that could be disguised as something else.  I've created this blog to vent about Plan, track my progress, let off steam, and write about what I'm writing about in a less formal medium. And yeah, I'm sure this will evolve into me writing about my life sometimes, and maybe some humor posts too.

Plan begins. Good-bye sanity.