So it’s the Christmas break. Placement and academic study has officially finished for 2016 and it’s the festive season so the last thing on my mind is my holistic care presentation or my review article. I have spent the last 2 weeks doing as much paid work as I could and getting into the festive season with friends, tis the season to be merry and all that! There is one small problem with this…. deadlines aren’t going away and I the longer I go without doing work the harder it is going to be to get back into it. I know this because this is 3rd year, I know by this point what I am like and apparently I work best under pressure so for some reason I seem to leave everything to the last minute. So today I decided to try and get some kind of order and plan for getting this work done and meeting my deadlines. I made a bit of a timetable, I have now broken down what needs to be done and set myself days ahead of time that I am going to set aside to do the work. I need to be honest with myself…. I know that the 4 days I am back home in Northern Ireland for Christmas are out and New Years Eve and day are out too but apart from that all systems will have to be go.
As part of a healthcare degree there is a large component of group work and my holistic care presentation falls under the group work category, so although I may want to leave things to the last minute, that isn’t possible. This is not just about me, I need to think about the rest of my group and ensure that I keep up to date with them. Maybe spending the best part of an hour making this excel spreadsheet of work plans was just procrastination but I think it helps to have a schedule to stick to and time periods to do things. Almost like giving myself that last minute pressure without it actually being last minute. It really can be hard to motivate yourself regardless of how old you are, how much study you have done, how academic you are, or how much free time you have. I am a queen of creating excuses for myself. Today it was the gym, yesterday it was a late night on Sunday and having to work last night. Tomorrow who knows what it will be. What I do know is that I work best at the library as I have less distractions there so getting up early and heading into uni as if I am heading to work for the day works really well for me. And that age old piece of advice to be organised is definitely ringing true. Armed with my spreadsheet, new pukka pad, new pens, folder with dividers and a printout of my presentation and presentation guidelines tomorrow I will be in the library for 9am and will hopefully be making a sizeable dent on what needs to be done (for that module anyway!). After Christmas will come the review article and again I have quite a sizeable amount of work to do for that as procrastination has been the spice of my life since mid November when I last looked at my articles to be reviewed. I will let you guys know how I get on, in the mean time Merry Christmas!!!
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