Polly Procrastinator
This is an interactive blog!
My friend Polly has become a procrastinator. It’s an odd development since until now she has been disturbingly driven to finish her class work for her doctorate. She’s been studying and juggling the stress of a full time job and post-graduate work for years and her dedication to the time-honored tradition of “cracking the books” has been nothing less than inspiring. Now, however, she has stalled after trudging her way just one small step from the pinnacle for which she has labored so diligently. She needs only finish her dissertation and she will be done, but with no structured classes and no deadlines…she has sputtered out.
As a fellow procrastinator, I can sympathize. In fact, this behavior is much more familiar to me than her previous M.O. of full-on attack. I can understand the pressing need to do ANYTHING other than the one thing you’d really like to cross off your to-do list.
Polly, however, finds this new behavior disturbing and needs help propelling herself to the summit. In one of her recent emails, Polly wrote, “ I'm enlisting all of my friends to berate me and make me feel shame and embarrassment for not having finished yet, so if you'd like to join in on that bit of fun, it would be much appreciated.”
As a matter of fact, I would, Polly. In fact, I’m going to go one step further and enlist anyone who might be reading this to join in as well. Please take just a minute or two and write a quick response to this blog. I will forward all relevant responses on to Polly. It can be as short as “Get off your butt, Polly!” or as long as the dissertation she is avoiding. It can be sweet and pleading. It can be belittling (although not unduly profane or vulgar). It can funny. It can be pretty much anything you think might motivate a person. Hell, write more than one so you can enjoy the whole range of options. Basically, I’m going for bulk here, so round up your friends and have them motivate Polly as well.
Remember, this is for a good cause. Polly is a great person and deserves this degree. So please pitch in on this educational intuitive.
7 comments:
Gimme a P
Gimme an O
Gimme a L
Gimme a L
Gimme a Y
Gooooooo Polly!!!
Let's go, Polly! You're just inches from a fantastic reward for all your work... Well, Ok. It's really just some letters after your name. But they're letters the rest of us schmucks don't get to claim!
Polly,
Don't let the system beat you! I know how tiresome school can get, I'm working on my third degree with about two more years of classes to go. But you are so close to earning something a lot of people don't have. Don't let school kick your ass, throw down and fight back. Besides when you are done you can demand that everyone call you Doctor. How cool is that?
Polly wanna Ph.D.?
I read an article a while back about the high proportion of female grad students who don't ever finish their dissertations. You don't want to become a statistic, do you?
Meh, don't worry about finishing school right now, you've got much more important thigs to do, like sleep! Did this help? ;)
Thanks to everyone who posted a quick message to Polly. She assures me that the resulting guilt is helping greatly. And to those blog lurkers out there who read but won’t post…even for such an important cause as this. Shame…shame. Except for Taltap, he gets a full pardon. First of all, he sent me the link to that fine procrastination article I incorporated into the blog. But more importantly, when asked why he had not posted a comment, he quickly explained that he had every intention of doing so…but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Ah, theme based apathy, perfect. So, Polly, even though Taltap didn’t post. One of these days…he might. And if you’re not done by that time, you’re gonna feel really guilty, because he couldn’t even pretend to procrastinate as long as you have.
Hey, I was reading the blog to get out of doing work. Then I was thinking of a response to post, meanwhile the link didn't work, so I had to find something else to fill the time that I should have been using to get work done. Two to three hours later, I finally started my work (that's half the battle), got bored working, checked back to this page to see if the link was working. When the comment link loaded, I spent time reading the posts, clicked on the link several times to post my own response. Then did the ultimate procrastinator's response which was going back to previously dumped work to get out of typing a response. So, obviously, I know a little about procrastination. Finally, I'll get to my response to Polly...(do you think this was more procrastination?) Polly, try telling other people your deadlines you set for yourself. I set deadlines and break them all the time because they are just my deadlines. If I tell someone else and don't make the deadline, I feel like I am letting someone down. Good luck!
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