Sydney Life

There are certain things that come with the status of being a student. Coffee, iPods, lectures, Facebook, clubs and societies, moving out, getting a job and yet still being poor, just to name a few. There’s also study and exams. And with study and exams, comes procrastination. Ever wondered how people just not procrastinate and actually manage to get things done? (these are a rare breed indeed at uni) Ever aspired to such a level? Well, I have, and now you can too.

But firstly, how did my procrastinating habit come about? Well, it all started when I was a fresh faced first year. I did what any first year would’ve done—actually revising after every lecture, putting in actual effort for the pre-work to tutes and labs, typing up my notes diligently, filing it away neatly, and all. But, despite all that effort, I discovered I was still as stressed as ever during stuvac and the two exam weeks, aka the Three Week Torture. After I received my results, it was just shockingly obvious that I wasn’t getting the bang (results) for my buck (effort). From there, it went downhill, and now I have as big a procrastination problem as any uni student. It did not help when my second year marks were comparable to those in first year—and the only revision I had done was during stuvac (and there was still some leeway for procrastination during stuvac).

There’s only a point to which you can get by while still procrastinating in stuvac, and that point was this semester. When I received my exam timetable…let’s just say unless you’re Super(wo)man, it is not possible to cram in stuvac, material for 4 exams in the first 5 days of exam week. I had a similarly horrendous timetable in first semester, first year, but this time the material is thrice as hard (since it’s third year). I knew I had to buckle down, and on one of those rare Internet surfing sessions with a purpose other than procrastination, I found—him. Mr Temptation Blocker.

He saved me from procrastination and, hopefully, a fail or two. So who is he? Basically, he stops you from accessing selected programs for a certain period of time, and if you want access to any of these programs during that time, you need to enter a randomly generated string of 32 characters, which is an absolute pain. Some programs are automatically listed for banning, such as Internet Explorer. You can also add programs and documents to that list, like that novel you’ve been working on but don’t need the distraction of during study periods. So, go ahead and Google him, he’s good with any Windows operating system. The only criticism I have is that you cannot block specific websites, so if you really need to check something out, you will unfortunately have to type all 32 characters to unblock Internet Explorer again.

So now you know how I've been off the Internet for the Three Week Torture, and hence the timing of this post. Good luck to all those with upcoming HSC trials, hopefully Mr TB will be as good a friend to you as he has been to me :)

And now for the post exam cleanout...