Okay, I'll Say It: "I Told Myself So"

I was up at 6:45 AM this morning to get ready for an 8:00 AM appointment when they called to cancel. Unwilling to let myself go back to bed (like I have every other day this week when I wake up early), I told myself I had to be productive. So, I got online and started watching a few episodes of The Daily Show (which I justified as productive because I got caught up on a lot of the news stories I had missed in the past month), when suddenly I hit pause and...gasp!, picked up a pile of papers to grade! I know, I was astonished, too. I guess when I've watched every mindless thing I can and am tired of reading (which I can also justify as I'm reading books my students are writing essays on next semester), and my back is up against the wall (so to speak--I'm really just relaxing on my couch), I finally turn to work to ease my boredom and help me to feel more like a successful human.

Starting out, I'll admit, I chose the easy multiple choice questions to grade so I could half-watch the rest of The Colbert Report I was about to start when the initial epiphany struck. However, after quickly finishing those, I found myself tackling the larger essays, I guess with a mentality of "Let's get the tough stuff done first." However, after about 15 minutes, I began to get brain pains and found myself looking for other things to do. So, I tried one of the tricks we use in the classroom to help students focus on large, intimidating assignments: chunk it, then take a brain break. Believe it or not, grading part of an essay and then watching some drivel like Judge Mathis or allowing myself to pig out on chocolate for a few minutes really helps to keep me going. It really is crazy that the strategies they have teachers use to help students often help me get through long spells of grading when I'm struggling with the persistent pest of procrastination. (Look at me--3 hours of grading under my belt and I'm still slinging super alliterations, sassy sarcasm, AND it is still around NOON!).

This brings me to the point where I have to say "I told you so" to myself. I know that I have a tendency to build up something I have to do and am dreading into a huge dramatic problem that can never be solved even if I had a million years. (Hyperbole comes in all shapes when you are staring at a stack about as high as the total snow we've gotten in the past week and only want to keep enjoying the break). However, even though I logically know this, I cannot always make myself acknowledge it and just start working without letting the drama snowball, so to speak. So, I am always caught in this circular rut, similar to the ring around the tiger's cage at the zoo from his daily, repetitive walk: I over-dramatize work, become paralyzed, don't work, and feel guilty, then I decide to work, and hate myself for not just starting earlier and for dramatizing everything in the first place. You would think that this sounds more like a line than a circle, as if I'd learned a valuable lesson, that massive projects aren't that bad and can be accomplished if I would just start. But, for whatever reason, this "cycle" I experience is very similar to the selective amnesia women get in relation to the pain experienced while giving birth. I seem to have selective amnesia about how it isn't so bad once I get started, and instead can only remember how painful it is to get started and see how much time I will lose from my life to grade it all.

Quite a cynical point of view, considering how much better I feel as a productive human being after just a few hours of (albeit, sometimes grueling) work. I hope I can be the one to break this cycle. I have no one to blame it on, saying: "I learned it from watching YOU!", except myself. I have trained myself like Pavlov's dogs, but instead of salivating at the sound of a bell, I become paralyzed and want to vomit at the sight of a huge stack of essays to grade. How did Pavlov retrain those dogs? Or did he ever remove that habit, so those poor dogs don't have to drool every time an angel gets its wings for the rest of their lives? I certainly hope not. I could try electric shock therapy (which my dad suggested a few days ago, hopefully as a joke!), but I think that might just make me more angry and bitter towards the growling stack of grading. So, I guess I'll just keep trying those strategies we use on the kids to "trick" them into learning or working and see what happens... :)