Amyra Week 2: Organized Chaos
My friends like to say that I am as type-A as someone can be. In fact, my personality has earned me the title of “mother of the friend group.” Anytime we plan to meet, I am always in charge of organizing—and, I love it! I love the ease of knowing that everything has been arranged by someone I can trust: yours truly!
So, welcome to your very own guide to organization, led by Amyra.
Tip number one: never start anything on time. As type-A as I am, I have a history of not starting assignments on time because I do not feel a sense of urgency to finish them until I absolutely have to. It is a thrilling self-induced chaos contradicting my perfectly color-coded planner with every assignment lingering day by day, waiting to be checked off. Yet, in a caffeine rush, I manage to complete every assignment with a level of focus that can never be replicated without that panic.
This brings me to tip number two: always procrastinate in style. Even if I plan to defer my assignments until necessary, I must spend extra time organizing my tasks into a perfectly designed planner with beautiful, loopy letters reminding me that my chemistry homework is due tomorrow. An array of highlighters and pens for every color of the rainbow, but none of them are being used for my annotations just yet—my planner awaits!
And lastly, tip number three: learn to conquer the sea of tabs. In that last hour, my Google Chrome window could be mistaken for that of a grandma who never knew you could close a tab: one tab for Google Docs, 15 searches for synonyms, my favorite Spotify playlist in the background, and a group chat with my friends who are all frantically asking whether our teacher said to write in pen or pencil.
In all seriousness, though, cramming for my math test until 2 AM—just to fail it!—to the sounds of the clock ticking down seconds until I had to face my fate utterly humbled me. Since then, I have learned that despite the miracles last-minute urgency pulls off, the true reward comes from a week’s preparation of meticulous notes, a graveyard of binder papers with hundreds of solved problems, and that sweet 100% in the gradebook. That said, I have not completely abandoned my procrastination mindset; instead, I have learned to do my best to seek that same peace of mind I get from planning an event on time. So, my revised advice is to use that perfect system of organization towards actually finishing things on time to enjoy a peaceful eight hours of sleep.
Hi Amyra! As I was reading your blog, I found myself relating to you a lot! Initially, I thought I wouldn't be relating as much to you because you explained how your friends like to describe you as a type-A person, and I am an extremely type-B person. So, I was surprised when you started listing tips that are habits of mine too; I start nothing on time as well! Like how you said that you can’t achieve the level of focus without that panic, I feel like without pressure and urgency of an assignment deadline, I can’t push myself to focus and finish my work. Though, recently, I have been forcing myself to do things earlier because school volleyball eats up too much of my time. It feels good to do things ahead of time and not have to worry about it, but knowing myself, I’m going to fall into the same habit of dragging assignments out until the last minute when the season’s over.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, I also have an absurd amount of tabs on my computer—I just counted 27 tabs in one window! My tabs are similar to yours; I have endless tabs of synonyms and other miscellaneous questions, a tab for Spotify, and countless Google Docs open of assignments, agendas, and assignment details. I remember last year, when we had Kaeding together, I always admired how clean and pretty your color-coded notes were! I hope I can achieve that level of neatness in my notes as well, it might make me more motivated to look at my writing and actually study. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Amyra! I relate to you so much. I like organizing my schedule because it makes my endless amount of homework and studying seem doable. I’m also like you in the sense that I feel more at ease when I organize things myself. It’s not that I don’t trust other people to do it; I just like knowing for sure that everything went well. But as much as I enjoy keeping track of everything, I’m also a procrastinator, and I think it gets worse every year. Every time I sit down to study for a test, I can’t focus as well as if I’m cramming the night before the test. That’s probably a bad habit, and I should probably change it, but my procrastination just takes over. Sometimes, when I have a lot of work to do, I find myself more willing to do anything except for the work that’s urgently due, such as creating a to-do list or maybe doing that math homework that’s due next week instead of the physics homework that’s due tomorrow. Similar to you, whenever I do my English assignments, I almost always have to search up synonyms, so I also end up with a bunch of open tabs. I definitely agree with your last point about how much better it is to not procrastinate, though, so I will keep that in mind when doing my work. Also, I love how you listed it as tips. I thought it made it so much more engaging. Thanks for sharing!
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