Well, stuff happened and now I’m trying to figure out how to pull myself back together before I manage to completely mangle what’s left of my GPA, lord help me. In any case, I can still try to blog and study on my own, and try again next semester once I’ve gotten my act together. Here’s hoping…
Anyway, ostensibly this blog is here for me to express myself in ways that I couldn’t without the internet. “The medium is the message”–the advent of print, radio, television, the music industry, theater, all of it has irrevocably shaped our world and the way we communicate within it. Obviously, this isn’t anything we haven’t already seen for ourselves. But a lot of us have still got this idea that the Internet is a series of tubes for porn an all-encompassing black hole that sucks you in and leaves you lost and confused.
Case in point: me. The biggest reason why I’m up a creek without a paddle in my studies now is because of how much freedom the Internet provides while at the same time giving next to nothing in the way of boundaries. You can do important research for your term paper from the comfort of your own home, or you can end up wasting hours reading about what horrible disease that mild headache you have could really be a symptom of because you happened upon Wikipedia’s main article for House MD. And unless you have someone standing over you with a large blunt object in one hand and the power cord to the computer in the other, there is probably nothing to stop you from doing so. That’s the scary part, even scarier than 4Chan. Probably.
So while I drop this class, pull my head out of my rear end, start seriously studying, and think of a way to tell my parents, I’m going to try to find time to occasionally update this blog with my progress. Hopefully by the time spring semester rolls around, I’ll have gotten to the point where I can start analyzing different anime and trying to make sense of some of the weirder stuff Japan has given us. Until then, all I can do is fight to kick my bad habits. Hopefully, it’s still early enough in the semester for me to start recovering in my other classes if I keep at it.
So, notes to self: start going to bed earlier so the alarm clock is actually useful and not just an obnoxious suggestion. Study in the living room, away from the computer, in the space between and after classes. Stop wasting so much time playing Solitaire on your iPod. Music’s fine; games that are mostly unwinnable from the start are not. And for the love of all that is good and true, STAY OFF OF THE COMPUTER UNTIL YOUR HOMEWORK IS DONE. That does double for studying for tests, quizzes, etc. You have a paper you need to write? Unplug the modem and get away from where you can pick up on the local wi-fi. All those weird little stories and doodads on the Internet will still be there when you get back.
Here’s hoping I’ll have more promising progress made next time. Hasta luego.
