How to College: Writing Papers

I used to write my papers during the week of the deadline. If I was in a particularly stupid mood, it would be done the day before. Was I able to do it? Of course! But the stress and amount of work, that were supposed to be dealt with during weeks, would be condensed in one or two days, and it never did good to my health and mind. Also, there is always the thought of not getting a good grade, that can annoy a student for weeks; and, because of the rushed work, sometimes they would really be pretty bad...

I was tired of living by these kind of emergencies. They are never worth the stress. So, following some ideas and tips online, I made myself a sort of step-by-step guide to writing my essays, papers, etc. This last semester of 2014 was a very tough one, and if I hadn't come up with this thing, I'd have freaked out (though this seems to be college life's uttermost objective...).

Learning how to college - a "series" by me

There's something important I would never have guessed about college: it doesn't matter how much you love your course, the evaluations will always be awful. The end of the semester is the perfect time to complain about life on twitter, put songs to play at maximum volume and ignore all responsibilities, right? Even if you manage to do all the tests without studying, or writing all papers in one day, it's always going to be the worst choice - it keeps you from sleeping and living properly. My third semester was a particularly crazy one, and I finally realized how this way of managing things is actually a damn waste of life. My senior friends say it's totally normal, that everyone goes through it all the time, but I've had enough. Either I learned how to deal with all this properly, or dropped the course (like many friends of mine have already done, actually...).

I started testing some techniques I found online about time management. There were some great ideas, like the using of Freedom (app to cut internet) and GTD (Getting Things Done). But I simply couldn't deal with them. In fact, they all got me even more anxious. I decided to select specific ideas from different sites and authors and, little by little, create my own sense of organization. I got into this in mid-2013, but only now I can say I actually have a system. Hadn't it been for all these things, I'd never been able to do all the things I achieved last year, nor would I have gone through this last semester at college without having a mental breakdown.

This month I had to handle two papers; me-from-the-past would probably have written anything in the very last three days before the deadline, just out of desperation. However, I was able to get everything ready in the very week before! It was still quite difficult and stressful, as I was actually trying to make a good work - so, in the end, the all the time I spent in it turned into something became very satisfied with. I wouldn't have done it without my personal system and my sweet and very helpful planner.

My cute 2015 planner :3

Times of silent desperation

I have a dog who sometimes acts quite angrily, and today my brother was shouting at her again. He gets pissed off really easy; for three years now, he has been shouting at her for not behaving the way he wanted. I tell him to be delicate, that she’s a dog, she doesn’t freaking understand people the way he does. Seriously, I think he just can’t get this: he acts as if the dog should know what he is thinking, he doesn’t want to do what it is needed for her to obey him. What really enrages me in my brother’s actions is that it was HE who most wanted to have her at home, and now he doesn't even help me to take care of her.

Seeing this reminds me of the millions of pets who get abandoned by people like him, who doesn’t have enough patience to instruct their animals properly. They think it’s not their own fault at all and, to save their oh-so-precious time, they just throw the pets away as some shitty object they didn’t like that much. I seriously start feeling sick every time I think about this; what makes my mind wonder about everything awful that is happening in the world right now: war, innocent children living in the streets, taking drugs and killing others to survive. People who fight to exhaustion for a sip of water, people who don’t live, but only survives. I think about the other animals who are suffering for lack of home on their natural habitat, or the ones who are being raised inside a cage like jars to be exposed or puppy-making machines. I wanna scream.

Knowing that all of this happens while I can lead a totally comfortable life is terrible; knowing I can’t change all of those situations is just mind blowing. When I start those reflections, the only conclusion I can get is: what’s the fucking point in living in a world like this? No, seriously, tell me, because I don’t see any. In these times, I lose all my will of being alive.

Despite some obvious problems, I love my life. But I feel extremely guilty of having so much while others have less than nothing; it's been hard to go through the day without getting sick and depressed.

I don’t wanna die; sometimes I wish I’d never been born at all…