Doing Things and Getting Things Done
When you’re doing things you’re at least not procrastinating. Step One is to get off your arse and start doing things. However, step Two getting things done is a little more valuable to your agenda than dithering around doing things without purpose.
It’s not uncommon at university to meet an adult student who pleas for the mercy of the lecturer (or the curriculum) for some understanding. OK they haven’t been in school for 20 years and it can be daunting to open books and write tutorial work and stay up until midnight hammering away at an essay. But, to be honest, at a certain point that all becomes a moot point when you’re enrolled in a Masters program. University, if it’s anything at all, is a world of sink or swim. Get a Master degree, fail or walk away – it’s an extremely selfish environment. Our education is ALL about us.
So it doesn’t matter how often someone says they just can’t read books or write essays because the only reality is the workload and the deadlines. If you don’t force yourself to read those textbooks and you fail to write those words you don’t get a Master degree. And yes it’s unpleasant (for us all), and yes it’s a brain squeeze and many-a-day you’ll lay on the futon with a sick feeling in your stomach that cries out your total fear of failure. That’s university. That’s why they don’t just hand out academic qualifications. Trust me, very few people enjoy doing all that reading about accounting, economics and law that I’ve been doing over recent weeks.
What I’m trying to say in a long-winded way is for such a person, if they were to stumble upon my humble weblog, to just do the work. The cost of course is sleep, time, effort, pain, tears and distress. That’s university. The benefit is the Master degree, or the Bachelor degree or the PhD. Unfortunately some people enrol with the idea that they’ve already earned the credit and will only have to do the things they already know. That just ain’t true. And for every graduate that I stood with last year we had around six who quit along the journey. Getting things done is the part that counts.
