Monthly Archives: October 2012

Wait wait I’m still procrastinating

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In my book, procrastination does not entirely deserve its heinous reputation. True, procrastination is in many ways about avoidance, hesitance, even abject fear. But I say it’s also about problem-solving. Not your best problem-solving strategy, but an attempt nonetheless. What good does it do? In the moment, you are spared the anticipated stress of doing your work. Unfortunately, procrastination produces other stresses, like feeling guilty about not doing your work, feeling rushed because you are left with less time to do your work, and ultimately the worst of all worlds: not doing your best work because you’ve run out of time and are preoccupied by remorse and regret.

So the question really is, if procrastination is a misguided attempt at solving a problem, what are other ways to solve that same problem? What solves the problem without yielding the aftertaste of guilt, regret, and stress?

First of all, let’s define what the problems are we’re trying to solve.

The Problems:

Feeling overwhelmed
There’s so much on my plate I don’t know where to start.

Rebellion
No parents – boo yah! I can do whatever I want with my time!
I don’t even really want to be a doctor/lawyer/engineer/anything-my-parents-want-me-to-be.

Head in the sand
I’ve put it off this long, what’s one more day?

Impulse control (lack of)
Ooh look! My roommate’s cousin’s boyfriend updated his facebook status!

Sabotage
If I wait until it’s too late to do good work, I can tell myself my poor performance is because I waited too long. Then I’ll never have to really find out if my best effort wasn’t good enough.

Low frustration tolerance
I CANNOT STAND HOW I FEEL WHEN IT ISN’T PERFECT.

Insecurity
What if I can’t do this work?
What if feel inadequate?
The last time I tried, I failed, and I might fail again.
What if I didn’t understand the lecture and there’s no way I can start the pset?
What if it takes too long?

The Solutions

Feeling overwhelmed
Parse your work. If you want to climb Everest, you gotta start from the bottom. One step at a time. First look at the paper prompt. Then look at your notes. Then organize your notes. Then refine your notes. Then develop your ideas. If necessary, intersperse rewards like donuts or naps in between each of these discreet tasks.

Rebellion
That’s right, you’re here for your education and no one else’s. So who is it really screwing if you don’t do your work? If you really want to rebel, tell your parents you want to be a veterinarian/philosopher/anthropologist instead of an engineer.

Head in the sand
Yes, it is nice and quiet down there. But since you’re not really shutting out the noise in your head reminding you that you know better, grab hold of a friend and get yourself back on track. Now is not the time to isolate. OK seriously, stop reading this blog now. Go get a friend to help you start your assignment.

Impulse control
When you have the impulse to check facebook, just pause for a moment, a moment, and consider this question: how did it work out for me the last time I procrastinated?

Sabotage
Take the risk of doing your best. Play out the whole imagined disaster. What’s the worst that can happen? Will lives be lost? See how your CS professor deals with finding out he’s not all that as a freshman at Stanford.

Insecurity
Know this: intelligence is malleable. It grows with effort and time on task. You will get better at learning the more you work at it. You’re not supposed to have nailed it yet.

And by the way, if you aren’t sure you’re procrastinating, ask yourself if you have ever said these things to yourself:

“I work best under pressure, so I’m waiting until I get that adrenaline surge at 3am the night before it’s due.”

“I don’t know how to start this p-set, so I’m waiting until I know how.”

“YOLO.” Closes books, begins partying.

“I waited until the last minute last time and it worked out okay, so why not this time?”

“Relax. The world won’t end if this doesn’t get done.”

“I always spend the first 4 hours staring at a blank screen. I might as well do something else for 4 hours and then just start writing after that.”

“If I work on this, I’ll miss out on…”

“Writing that other paper at the last minute — that was a fluke.”

“I’m burned out.”

“I’m reading The Duck Stops Here for the fourth time this week because it’s SO much more approachable than my physics homework.”

Yes, dear. You are procrastinating. Now it’s really time to stop reading this blog, and get to work.

As always, stay calm and stay tuned.

Next time: Scrap time

Come to zero: managing test anxiety

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Not enough adrenaline

Being anxious before or during a test is normal. When we’re anxious, we’re vigilant, and when we’re vigilant, our bodies are producing adrenaline.The goal in dealing with anxiety is not to remove adrenaline completely, but get just enough of it to make it useful. Not enough and we don’t bring our “A” game. Too much, and our “A” game goes out the window. Anxiety resides in both our minds and in our bodies, and to get a handle on it, both mind and body need attention.

Physical Aspects of Anxiety

Too much adrenaline

Our bodies produce adrenaline for situations in which danger is perceived. But this physiological response, which has its roots in the “fight or flight” phenomenon, was not built for critical thinking or subtle problem solving, but rather for running hellfire in the opposite direction of the predator sizing up its dinner options. Most of the stress-reduction and relaxation techniques rely at least in part on attending to the physiological processes that work in concert with emotional stress. Deep breathing, for example, can help bring oxygen to the blood and brain, allowing you to think more clearly. Thinking clearly, then, is a direct result of practicing these physiological interventions. And I’m pretty sure thinking clearly can only help you on an exam. As you breathe in and out, the adrenaline in your system is dissipated, which will also help reduce the sour feeling in your stomach.

Psychological and Emotional Aspects of Anxiety

Cognitive intervention can keep you out of the spin zone

The psychological and emotional aspects of anxiety can also be mitigated by specific attention to them. Certain cognitive interventions, that is, thinking about something that interrupts the cognitive fire fueling the emotional anxiety, can be used to short circuit panic as it escalates. Assuming you’re reading this before or after (hopefully not during) your exam, the following advice is intended to prepare you for next time. In order to use cognitive interventions successfully, they need to be practiced and rehearsed, and the test-situations that will trigger anxiety need to be fully explored and anticipated. Ultimately, you can teach your mind to have a well-rehearsed response to the psychological and physiological reactions that accompany test anxiety. For example, if you practice in a “no-pressure” environment the act of anticipating that you will get stuck somewhere in the exam, then indeed get stuck, and work your way through the problem, you will introduce to your response pattern one of perseverance rather than panic. Another option is to plan a specific “talk-down” script that you practice saying to yourself if/when you start to get too anxious. It might go something like this.

However you handle it, anxiety, while troublesome in massive quantities, need not unhinge you. Later this quarter, we’ll discuss the psychosocial theories about testing and anxiety such as stereotype threat and mindset.

As always, stay calm and stay tuned.

Next week: Wait wait wait I’m still procrastinating

This is not a test

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It's like P90x - for your noggin.
Sunday night…

There you are, in the wee hours of the night, looking over your notes, occasionally checking facebook: “studying,” as they call it. Just like you should. As you flip through the pages you think to yourself “Yeah, I remember when she lectured on that… that looks familiar…I remember learning that.” It’s all pretty familiar, as you read over notes that more or less capture the concepts you learned and as you walk through problems that were done in class or for homework.

It’s familiar, but do you really grasp it? Maybe, maybe not. It is with all good intention that you study and review. But when it comes right down to learning, your study habits may not be getting you the traction you’ll need for the exam. Hydroplaning across the concepts won’t do it.

Let’s get physical:

Reviewing is sort of like lifting a can of beans and expecting it to grow you some muscle. Exercising below your capacity – rather than pushing yourself – is apt to make you feel like you’re studying, but won’t actually yield much in the way of deep learning or preparation for an exam. Don’t be expecting an intellectual six-pack of abs. Sure, basic review isn’t effortless, but it doesn’t make you work that hard. Imagine you’re in the gym: building real muscle hurts, because you’re breaking down and then rebuilding proteins in your cells. In building knowledge, you’re building neural networks. That is, you’re asking dissimilar cells to connect with each other which requires building of cell mass to create richer networks. It’s thirsty work. Ultimately, when you get to the exam, you’ll need to be lifting 20 pounds more than you’re used to; you need to get used to the feeling of puzzling and solving problems that aren’t familiar. Here are some effective ways to build test muscle in the days and weeks prior to exams:

Plan your workouts

This is what your brain could look like.

Some people start planning for tests the moment the quarter starts – most don’t. At a minimum, you should try to begin you’re test prep five days before the exam. And what do you know, our friends over at the Center for Teaching and Learning have this bad boy to help you out: a five day plan to help you organize yourself and your notes at a leisurely pace.

Organize your routine

Group your materials by subject rather than source. All your reading notes may be in one book and all your lectures notes in another, but you’re not going to be tested on where your knowledge came from, but rather, on the significance of what you know: you will do better by combining lecture and reading notes that have to do with the same material.

Test yourself

It’s unfortunate that testing and evaluation are so closely tied to each other in the educational vernacular because it turns out that testing is a great learning tool. Consider this 2011 New York Times article on the benefits of testing as a learning method, which states that “the struggle involved in recalling something helps reinforce it in our brains.” In other words, the harder you work finding something deep in your noggin, the better you are actually learning it. So get out there, hit the mental gym, and whip your brain into swimsuit season shape.

As always, stay calm, and stay tuned.

Next time: Going to zero: how to manage test anxiety