How Screwed Am I ?

[Master P]

Hey everyone,

I need some help sorting stuff out. I am a senior entering into my last year of this horrid program.

ok basically school starts in exactly 7 days and i am stuck with an extremely large amount of summerwork that i have procrastinated on (who wants to take a guess at what the "P", in my display name means?).

basically i have the following:

1) Read Madame Bovary and take a journal on it, noting all the events and important things that go on in each chapter (including, plot, symbols, themes, motifs, characterization etc.) This counts as a Test grade for my English Class.

2) Complete a Rough Draft of my World Lit 1 paper.

3) Complete a Rough Draft of my Extended Essay

4) Do 6 french related activities like watching a movie and writing a summary, going on french website for a while and writing about what you found, make a french dish, etc.

5) Do a short 500word essay for Computer Science (really easy)

These are the tools at my disposal:

1) copious amounts of Adderal

2) an ability to stay up all night

3) A laptop

4) the art of Bull****ting.

These are the natural forces working against me:

1) Procrastination

2) I get distracted easily

3) frusteration

4) the "i can't take this anymore, only one more year and im out of here!" mentality

Options:

1) Suicide

2) Run naked throughout the streets with no real destination

3) Buckle down and try to finish as much as possible. (Preferred)

so i plead the members of this website to aid me by giving me tips, a plan, or just about anything that would help my situation.

What assignments should i bull****?

what assignments should i spend time on?

Which are easy?

etc.

I don't know, i just need general help and advice.

all of this is much appreciated.

Thank you!

[deissi]

Your priorities should be the EE and the world lit. If you can finish those, read Madame Bovary. The rest dont really count for anything, so if you want to skip something, skip those. It's a lot worse if you ignore something that counts towards your final grade. Forget the French exercise.

[sweetnsimple786]

While I think that deissi is right generally, since you're American, your school grades probably matter more than your IB grades. I'm thinking you wouldn't have procrastinated so much if either mattered very much, but I think you're better off doing the following:

1. Read Madame Bovary and take the appropriate notes on it for sure. If you don't, your grade in that class will start off low & the teacher will think badly of you. Not a good idea.

2. Spend a good day on the WL. It's not that hard once you have an idea. Spend an hour or two on coming up with an idea, then an hour on an outline with quotations from the book, then just write it. Don't worry about making it good--just good enough for a first draft.

3. Figure out what you want your EE to be on ASAP! I think history or English literature may be the easiest at this point, or even in general. Then if you have time [which you don't] go to the local library and get a couple of books on it. Then search the internet for most of your sources for your first draft. Aim to get about 3000 words. I don't know how strict your supervisor is... but 3000 is better than nothing.. it's actually pretty sufficient for a first draft. Realize that this draft is going to have to undergo MAJOR revisions to reach a good draft because I told you to use a lot of interent sources when in reality, you want to minimize internet sites and use as many books/journals/primary documents as you can. This is why an English lit essay would be easier. Only the books you're covering could be your sources.

4. Use those BS skills here.

5. Just do it.

Distractions: take your router if you have wifi and turn it off if you don't NEED the internet. Log off of AIM/MSN/Facebook/Myspace/Whatever immediately. Go charge your phone so that it's nowhere near you. Then make a schedule. Be like... I'll read X pages of this book by 3. And then I'll go get a snack. Then I'll read this many pages by 5. Whatever. And stay on task. If you want, get a good friend to annoy you to death by asking if you're procrastinating or if you're working.

[Chelleee]

i'm pretty much going to parrot what everyone has already said

focus on WL and EE drafts as they are part of your final assessment - trust me getting these done earlier is a GOOD thing. it will save you lots of pain in the long run

next i would read madame bovary and read sparknotes at the same time to easily identify themes etc. i've read the book and i didn't find it difficult to read so allocate your time to the writing rather than the reading part

as for the others, they're exercises so worry about these last

last but not least, turn off your wi-fi or yank out your internet cable. and if you are going to use the internet ask yourself: do i REALLY need to use it? or will it just become a distraction

that and also i use a program called leechblock on firefox and i've set it so that i need to type in a 64 generated pin everytime i want to access sites like youtube, facebook etc

and chuck your phone somewhere so that you can't HEAR or SEE it.

good luck

[Sandwich]

Madame Bovary is such a popular book to study you'll be able to find tonnes of notes everywhere. I'm surprised they'd make something so easily copy/pasteable into part of an actual grade, to be honest! Even if you can't find decent enough notes online, Madame Bovary is dirt cheap to buy a book on - I should know because I tried to sell one on Amazon myself and it told me the nearest "used" price I was competing with was £0.01! I could buy thirty of them for the same as getting a packet of crisps, ahah.

Even if Madame Bovary counts for a grade which is equally important as your IB grades (assuming that's how it works everywhere in the USA), the WL and the EE will take you longer and require way more work. I'd suggest alternating between doing the EE and the WL to make sure you don't end up getting stuck on either of them (as you don't have much time), and totally ditching the pointless language exercises. Looking at those websites never seems to help you learn languages anyway, in my experience. You can make up all that stuff no problem.

At the end of the day, the EE is most important [worth most points] and you need to start that thing early anyway, lots of revisions involved. So start with that, and then the WL - and everything else you can probably do on the bus on the way into school

[Taigan]

I don't think you're completely screwed as long as you buckle down and prioritize. Basically, you need to decided which assignments are the most important to you. These will be the ones that actually go towards your final grade. I think the most important ones are your World literature paper and your extended essay. For now, you can forget about that french assignment. After you've done these drafts, you can start work on Madame Bovary (the internet will help you loads with this). I think the least important will be the french, which you should still do if you have time. The key thing is to set out what work you'll be covering each day (a realistic amount) and keep to it. To avoid putting the work off, get rid of the stuff that will distract you (i.e. internet, television, mobile etc.)

Hope this helps!

Good luck