Time is a lot more valuable than it used to be
I have long accepted and understand that the sixth form can and should be a lot more work than before as the level of study is significantly higher. That has finally become apparent at school in terms of difficulty where things are taking a step up (although due to personal skew and paranoia this is not apparent in history) at last. I am happy to be challenged and to question and to explore, however PC that may sound. However, sheer quantity of work has been proving a problem lately as I am not finding time for a lot else, as described in my previous post. This can’t be good – I should be doing things other than homework in an evening and could do with a longer weekend. It has been suggested that the initial burst will level off once teachers are satisfied that pupils (or ‘students’…) have got the message about what the sixth form is, and it does seem to me that things are getting a little less, but it is hard to tell if this is just me getting used to it. It is meaning that I am having to make changes to the things I do.
On an aside here, I am not always one hundred percent sure that I am doing the right work. I do things very throughly, wanting to do well and to get as much into my head now so that revision is a lot easier. But often for history I have reams of notes I am told to make and I don’t know if I am ramming too much detail down and wasting my efforts. I plan to speak a teacher about what I should be doing ideally.
For starters, I am unable to do little things on top of what I already do when they would normally be easy to accomodate. For example, there is a club starting at school for a board game called ‘Diplomacy’ or some such – I would love to go, but I really can’t devote another evening to an activity such as this. Another example of this problem is the National Cipher Challenge. I am on a team for that (we are actually doing rather well; will post on it when the competition gets serious and those in it for a laugh are eliminated from the ‘everything right so far’ group) but it is interfering with things already. This isn’t a major issue, really, because all it does is inconvenience me when I have the afternoon of the day the challenge is released off. But the point stands that I am having difficulty fitting small projects or events around what I do any more. Having to say no to constructive activities is not something that I am used to. Another example of this issue is the distinct lack of progress on the new SilentFlame website.
The above makes sense during term time but my involvement in my online projects, Wikimedia and freenode, has also been suffering. Wikimedia works a great deal over the medium of mailing lists, which we find very practical for discussion as they work with all sorts of configurations, assuming people use plaintext e-mails, which they do. I am subscribed to a lot of these lists but have them filtered in three directions: labels called wmfe for external and public lists, wmfi for internal, closed-subscriptions things I am involved in (not strictly true – I have at least one list on there that is not mainstream but that I do need to keep up to date on everything that passes through) and wmwp, which is for project-based lists such as for Wikipedia itself, rather than the parent organisation Wikipedia. Out of these, only wmfi actually arrives in my inbox where the rest get auto-archived. This is because I couldn’t and wouldn’t particularly want to keep up with all of those lists, so I have the important ones coming into my front view. The problem is now that even with this reduced quantity of lists, I simply do not have enough time to read everything that goes through. Or if I do, I am not reading efficiently enough. Even though I find most of the things on the lists fascinating and worth reading, I find that sometimes I have just had enough of the threads and am reading for the sake of reading. This is a waste of time – but what do I do? I do need to know what is going on within Wikimedia.
My specific jobs with Wikimedia are a different matter. I am ensuring that individual responsibilities will always be completed as I have been entrusted with them, and I have no problem getting them done. However, as with real life situations as described above, I cannot take part in smaller events and discussions if I wish to as I must focus on certain tasks. It makes things a lot less fun than they used to be where I could really get into my work. With freenode I am simply not doing as much work – this is fine as I do have a reasonably excuse, but it doesn’t help keep our image of availability of staff very strong because I am not around as much. However, I am still involved in the community there. Despite this I have had to give up one job, that is the verifying of group registration contact information, which is a shame. On this note, swhitton@freenode.net is no longer a valid e-mail address for me, so please do not try to use it if you are one of the few people who does. It was for group registration, so I do not need it anymore.
Throughout this I am always so thankful that I have my hosted Gmail account set up. Gmail is wonderful for keeping things organised and being patient when I don’t read my mail there 
I don’t think I would manage without it and so I am so grateful for the service from Google and the fact that they recently increased my 2GB limit (it does not go up continuously as it does on @gmail.com traditional Gmail. The conversation grouping, labels and filters do it for me.
It has been suggested that I don’t actually use my time as well as I could, and this is something that I have considered. It could be argued that by engaging in small-scale activities I am wastingtime, but I try to be consistently productive in choosing what to do. However I often dither between activities and become rather distracted and messy while not focussed on an activity, which is a really bad thing as I allow time to slip away. This I need to sort out – if I am not doing something, I should be reading e-mails or some such. I need to force myself into more productive habits, but it doesn’t seem to be working at the moment. I will keep trying.
I am dreading the sixth form for this very reason. I barely manage my time as is.
You are doing the right work, Sean. You are monster clever. Come on. When you start getting Bs or Cs back on your work, start worrying.
Diplomacy Club! Cipher Challenge! For * sake, is High Storrs just really dumb or something? My god! I mean, our chess club barely runs. And that’s it for intellectual *nit.
You may have to make a choice between cutting back on on-line stuff or RL stuff.
The fact you actually do work is impressive. Unfortunate for you, but impressive. Lack of time management, is not doing work slowly. Main thing to do is prioritize, and don’t get everything done at once.
You will be fine. Seriously, if I can cope with 5 full A levels then you will be fine with 5 AS Levels, philosophy being a “not real” subject at this stage… And we both do stuff outside of school. Trust me, it is copable with. As long as you don’t want a major social life.
And maths only gets better and mor exciting as it goes on!