Doctor Omega Wrote:You are correct to say that I have little willpower. It's hard for me to admit that, but it seems to be just the lack of willpower in scholastic activites. I do not intend to give a false representation of myself. I'm not lazy
I'm not lazy, I pass all my classes.
I'm not lazy, I got a B in all my classes.
I'm not lazy, I got an a A in all my classes.
I'm not lazy, I got an A and held down a job while taking classes.
I'm not lazy, I got an A and did research, volunteer service, and held down a job at the same time.
You're not hard enough on yourself. You're in a masters program and this is your last year. Suck it up. The better you do now, the more money you can ask in four-six months from employers. Better academic scores does not always correlate with financial success. But there is a reason why you decided to master in Computer Science and it wasn't so you could do nothing and play videogames.
Doctor Omega Wrote:I am neat, I love my life, and I do have a great work ethic. The heart of my problem is just not being motivated enough to bed down at a decent hour or take my schooling as serious as I should. I love playing video games and I love participating in forum communities and IRC. I enjoy them so much, that sometimes I will literally sit down and chat on other IRC channels with friends for hours, and completely lose track of time. The same holds true when I'm playing my console/PC games. Since I started a new runthrough in Paper Mario 2, I love to sit down and play. The problem with that is, I always tell myself, "Oh, I'll study after I'm done." Well, "when I'm done" usually happens around 2am when I'm much to tired to even think about school. But, to make things a little better, I have quit Maple and haven't missed it for even a second. That used to take up 75% of my day when I wasn't doing some homework or in class. If there's anything I really shouldn not give a shit about, it's Maple.
How fucking old are you? Five? Everyone on this forum board likes to play video games and wasting time posting useless crap to strangers they have never met in real life. Good things don't come in life without sacrifice. The world isn't handed to you on a silver platter. Everyone is competing to get ahead in life. There is a reason why you are getting a masters in computer science isn't it? There is a reason why you wasted that butt-load of money to continue your education instead of investing that money in a business or an industry. YOU are a product of investment and you are wasting all that money by not harvesting your academic potential. Many people get sick of their studies after awhile. I don't love EVERY aspect of my major. The only reason why I stick with it is because I'm getting a lot of financial aid money from it and I'm learning technical skills that I couldn't have gotten from any other major. In the end of the day I would prefer playing videogames and doing nothing all day. I wouldn't mind being a janitor, cleaning nasty poop and mopping up floors all day. I really wouldn't care. But people depend on me. Who is going to take care of my parents financially when they get old? Who is going to provide funding when my two cousins who are academic drop-outs are unable to make ends meet? Do you still want your parents to pay your rent when you're in your 30s? I don't. That's why I make investments and go the full mile even though I'm not infatuated with my area of study. People don't like the jobs they work but they understand that they've got to pay the bills.
Doctor Omega Wrote:First of all, if you read the time stamp of this topic, it'll further reinforce what I'm speaking about. For one, I'm sick of staying up this late. I am at my wit's end with myself, simply put. I stay up late, telling myself that I'll study and I don't. I've been blessed with the uncanny gift of making A's and B's without doing all the work that's required. And that's not to degrade the university I'm at either. I do all my assignments and take all the tests. But what bothers me the most is how well I could have done on a test if I had put forth the effort. Point in case, I have a test on Thursday that I really need to make good on, and I've done one section of the homework and studied a little. I tell myself I'll study, and I have the hardest time sitting down in front of the book. I guess you could say this is pretty normal for a lot of students, but for me, it's a character flaw that really bothers me and I haven't the foggiest clue where to start as to working toward a fix.
Why is this a problem? If you've been blessed with the ability to naturally get above average scores then why do you need to consider studying. Unless your gift isn't really as grand as you're making it out to be. I could have done great on a test? The question apparently doesn't drive home and hurt your conscience. It clearly doesn't make you feel guilty and wonder why you're such a waste. It doesn't rip you apart and make you physically grapple in the air trying to give shape to a future that has yet to come into existence. It doesn't make you pull an all-nighter when you feel like shit and deal with people you would have murdered if they were people walking on the street. I could have been this, I could have been that? It sounds like me when I was five years old and speculated being everything from President to Astronaut.
If you really want to change yourself then you'll stop bullshitting yourself about your "natural gifts" because they clearly aren't good enough to make you happy with how you're doing in your classes. And the only thing that should matter to you is being happy at the end of the day. You're infatuated by the short-term benefits that have been provided to you by financial loans and aren't looking at the long-term picture. The irony is that college is a long-term investment. A graduate program is an even more pronounced long-term investment. Losing sight of your investment now is getting rid of a very large down-payment that you could have used to invest in stock, go to Vegas and blow it all off on hookers, or set-up a sushi business or your own mom-and-pop shop.