Archive for the ‘Diary’ Category
Let’s try again
As I’ve written about before, I’ve been hit with the back-in-Oxford-woo-I-can-do-anything effect again and this has me much more positive about everything. When I say that I’ll do a certain job or session of academic work at a particular time, I can have real confidence that I will, which is quite different to my attempts to get myself to do things at home. But of course I know that this is something that won’t last and it’s important to take advantage of it now rather than waiting. So I’m making various plans of how I’m to go forward with the term that I’ll aim to stick to from the word go.
I had my meeting with our combined Dean & Chaplain yesterday, as planned since December, and the gears of Oxford welfare have been put into play around me, as he ran through various things. Within ten minutes some strings had been pulled (probably not really but it felt like that, with him picking up the phone and making calls) and I had my first appointment with the doctor for about ten years, to be checked out on two fronts: first to go through a standardised “depression test” in order to rule that out, and then to see if my inability to focus and concentrate might possibly be due to some kind of deficiency. So I went off to the appointment and it was a strange experience, because that particular doctor’s manner made it hard to take anything about the process seriously. He said “I’ll e-mail you the test and you can fill it in at home, laugh at it, and e-mail it back to me”, and then I’m to have a blood test next week, but I’m feeling that perhaps I should have listened to the Dean more carefully to be sure that I got what the Dean wanted out of the appointment, since it was nothing by surreally comic from my perspective.
The Dean asked me various questions and also asked my permission to speak to the Senior Tutor (who loves me anyway), just to get a word in in advance in case the dreaded Tutorial Board or even public exam-related procedures later in the year start to arise. We have both written to both sets of tutors (Maths & Philosophy) to let them know what to expect of me and that I’m trying to deal with it. But any kind of concrete advice on what I might actually do in practical terms to make some progress was absent, and I pointed this out, and was only offered the suggestion to do some scheduling, and to try and rise above myself and not get worked up about it. I think perhaps he is very aware that coming back to Oxford makes a difference in itself and also that a huge part of the problem is just me worrying about it, and every measure just described helps to counter-act this, so it would definitely be a good place to start. Still, I am left uneasy by the fact that while I might be able to be happy for the next nine weeks, I absolutely have to be in a position to work very hard over Easter – or, at least, much harder than I did over Christmas, and the thing is that right now I still have no roadmap for getting to anything like this.
So this morning I’m making my plans, making myself a tick sheet for them, trying to take advantage of start-of-term-ness. This double life we all lead is so very weird – when in Sheffield Oxford is forever away, and when in Oxford Sheffield is the same, and yet on return to either it’s as if I’ve never been away. Everyone is the same and not in any way bothered by the gap of time and neither am I, in both places; it was still nice to see friends yesterday. We’ll see what I can make of it. I do have nine weeks and perhaps for the next three, at least, I can forget about what comes after that.
New Years’ Resolution two of two: desperate measures
I don’t think I ever really expected to be able to follow through with what needed to happen this vac, being entirely without ideas as to how to make it happen, and unsurprisingly, four days before the end of it, almost none of it has been achieved. There’s a lot I could say and a lot of ideas and excuses and whatever but I’m not sure many of them are very interesting. My ability to make myself work despite not enjoying it (which is of course compounded by not doing it), which has got me through school and my academically difficult first year of university, has entirely left me, or I have lost it somehow, and unless I am able to do something then I’m going to sacrifice my degree. There’s no way I achieve anything right now; anything at all.
When I wrote that previous post I said to myself that I could have a couple of weeks to try and fix things, but if I failed, I said, I’d contact the college authorities for help, admit defeat, and become one of the failing students of Balliol. It took a lot for me to actually do this, as I now have, because for the past year I’ve been mentally separating myself off from this grouping. I’ve been advocating college’s welfare systems and regularly saying things like “well, look, none of us in this room will ever have to get any welfare as we have each other to go to, but…” and so on, but I feel like I’ve exhausted other possibilities, however hard it is in my foolishness to admit this. My parents, for example, don’t understand how I can love my subjects and get so much out of learning them in a lecture or tutorial yet, even with the pressure of deadlines and tests, can’t make myself do the hard work part. I never expected anything from them though as they have always had a policy of not getting involved in my education at all, throughout school, thinking that it has to be independent motivation. Well I’ve run out of that. None of my friends seem to have any ideas either. And I’ve been unable to draw it from myself. So I’ve admitted defeat, though of course that’s not a very helpful word to bandy about my mind, I suppose.
So now I’m to go back to my tutors and tell them that I’ve done almost nothing, that I’m trying to do things about it on my own and with the help of the various welfare figures around the place, but that I’m not making much progress so far. And all after a term where, at long last, Maths appears surmountable. I know that for the first time since coming to Oxford that I can do this, I can get on top of it, but that requires work that I seem incapable of doing. In one of the e-mails from College I was told that “don’t worry this is common and especially in your subject area”. I didn’t pay it much attention until a few hours later when I realised suddenly that it was a reference to the many, many Maths students (and esp. Math/Phils like me) who have dropped back years and got terrible grades and been refused entry to the fourth year. That’s the camp I now inhabit.
To the title of this post, then, and a lighter tone. While I’ve tried every one of my own faculties against this and failed, one thing I am managing to succeed on is my New Years’ Resolution to get up at 6:30 every day and have several uninterrupted hours of work in the morning when I definitely work best. It’s hopeless in the afternoon, but I do seem capable of achieving something at that time. So far, two days in, I’ve had no problems getting up but I’ve managed to lose what little focus I had both times, getting almost three hours of work on the first day but only one and a half today. But it’s progress so I’m pleased that I’ve got somewhere here. On Sunday I go back to Oxford and on Monday morning I go and talk about this in person, and we see what can be done. Balliol’s Chaplain tells me to have courage. But I’d most certainly be lying if I had much hope right now, though I suppose that being at home does that to you.
A personal manifesto for the rediscovery of scholarship
Nostaligia is an incredibly powerful piece of human psychology. It’s effect on this post will be one of turning up the brightness setting of the past, and the contrast with the present, but I don’t think that’s going to be hugely detrimental to what follows. It’d probably be pretty similar even if I had a time machine to get a truly accurate picture. A picture of myself just a few short years ago, when my subject (philosophy, if you want a name for it) stood open before me, where I thought I could go at it and handle any of it and where I would want to keep looking and keep grasping the new perspectives. Where I confidently strode out and proclaimed, and accepted the challengers and defended and retracted as appropriate. Where I didn’t hesitate for a moment before engaging with a new thought or thinker.
That form of hesitation now defines me, and the evidence for this is so very clear about me. A schoolfriend berated me some months ago for never actually doing/reading all these things I was doing to do/read. A tutor I’ve had this term echoed him, imploring me to read and explore. Two things have now come together: the student I have become in the latter half of this term, and my realisation that the comments of this tutor and of my friend and of other factors are one and the same. I’ve stopped, and I’m starting to fall backwards and to fall behind, intellectually. A task requiring effort that doesn’t absolutely have to be done now is always postponed. I don’t develop because I don’t put in the initial effort, because I hesitate and then never do it. Each of my four essays this term has been at the last minute, and each has been much poorer than they could have been. Problem sheets the same. And this is the very worst thing: as a direct result of this, I’m wasting my teaching here. On both the Maths and Philosophy sides I’ve had some absolutely fantastic tutors this term, and I’ve been inspired on both sides, but then I’ve let that flame of inspiration die before it’s really got going. I’m permanently failing to fan the flames. Perhaps it’s a problem of procrastination, but I dislike using a technical term like that without much of an understanding of what it means outside of popular parlance, where it’s rarely a serious issue. If you know more about this sort of thing then do say.
It’s not like I haven’t written about this before, but I think I have my finger on it now, with these factors that I’ve listed coming together. People will likely be saying “finally Sean’s realised what I keep telling him” – I don’t know, maybe, maybe not. The big thing that separates this post from my post at the end of the summer in terms of severity is that all this is now the very same problem during term. I’m not able to pull myself together in Oxford, of all places. This has got to stop before there is nothing left to salvage.
What’s it been replaced with? What’s dominating my thoughts (as well as worrying about this of course…) instead of what used to? A lot of the time it’s nothing. A lot of time-wasting, a lot of messing about with computers and silly videos. But also busy-bodying. While neglecting my actual duties, the amount of scheming and gossiping and politicising that I’ve been doing relating to the various student politics I’ve been involved in this term has been staggering. I’ve been so ashamed at watching myself. Firstly, the stuff is mostly insignificant, but it’s not even significant to me! It’s all self-created and it feels so stupid to write it. Politics is all about people and it’s all about that with me now too. I’m worrying about the fact that my friends are all third years who are about to leave. I’m comparing myself to others while refusing to allow myself to be positively inspired. I’m getting saddened by the subconscious and blameless yeargroup divide that will always keep me separated from everyone else around here. I’m using all this as an excuse not to break free and return to where I was. I can have friends, but at the end of the day, with what I want to devote myself to, I’m always going to be left in solitude. Once I was okay with that, but now I seem to spend a lot of time (fruitlessly, I might add, for it is my nature) trying to escape it.
Further, I’ve let the sapping of enthusiasm that often accompanies intense study here seep into me and further sap my reserves of interest. Someone e-mailed me recently, having followed the link to my blog in my e-mail signatures (which went out to about 500 people multiple times a week for the past three terms while I was JCR Secretary; I sometimes wonder how many people follow the link and find this site); she’s just started at Balliol and commented on how her willingness to start discussing things with people in a non-academic context had ebbed away. You start up conversations with the usual people to find hanging around College, and it’s always the same. For them, they can be proud of (one particular story here) getting in at 3 in the morning, going to bed, and then getting up at 5ish to write an essay for a 10am tute, or something, then trying to snatch some more sleep and still doing well. But this is not a life I am suited to nor is it a life I want. Yet as shown by all these last-minute essays and problem sheets this term, it seems to be what I’m left with and it doesn’t suit me and I am left unhappy, and worse, severely unfulfilled as expressed in this post.
But now I’ve got six weeks free from all that. I shall turn away from others until my scholarship is restored, until I take the plunge immediately and with gusto, like I once did. I’m going to forcefully throw all else from my mind. When I flag, I will accept mental fatigue from a mind unused to turning itself forcefully to its studies; I will take a break, I won’t give in. What is it hope to achieve? Firstly, I need to fix the lack of efforts in the latter half of this term. If I really work at it, it’s quite achievable that I’ll get on top of the term’s work: it doesn’t feel as out of reach as last year (this feeling is another source of regret for wasting teaching time this term to actualise this new-found confidence). Further, I want to read all that stuff I said I would. Or just read something, anything, and write about it a bit perhaps, so I have something concrete in order to wean myself off my need for quick results and easy insight. There are other projects: I have my website to fix, the JCR’s website to write lots of code for, I have some changes to my computing environment that I think will help me to deal with some of the organisational difficulties and inefficiencies I’ve had lately. I have lots of lists; I need to spend a little time bringing these together. I don’t know right now where I’m going to find the enthusiasm for these things. The bottom line is that it has to come from me. The balance of myself as an individual and as a cog in a social system is way out from where it should be.
I don’t know how the heck I’m going to get myself to do all this.
The Great Man … is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without respect … If he cannot lead, he goes alone … There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame.
source, emphasis mine
Introversy
This evening I’ve come out with a pretty scrappy blog post about this past month. It reads as rushed and all in a flurry, but that’s probably okay because it’s a nice reflection of how things have been this term, as with every term. After I wrote it and read it back and corrected a couple of the most glaring mistakes, I spent half an hour (that I really shouldn’t have spent on this) looking through my archives, particularly those of my sixth form years, skipping over the more recent stuff because I think it’s too early to go back and read all that yet. And now I feel very sad, because I think I’ve lost something: back then, I wrote with vigour and honesty about a huge range of topics. And now just about the only thing I’m capable of writing about is myself, and about the same old things. It doesn’t feel like my writing style has changed that much either, and I would have hoped it would have improved at least a little. Though others are in a better position to judge something like that than me.
How is it that I’ve lost all interest in setting out opinions in a calm and reflective yet detailed manner – I seem to have lost interest, so to speak, in having interests. Post after post contained – and I know I’ve got rose-tinted spectacles to at least some extent here – interesting and well-organised thoughts on politics, philosophy, my own approach to these and then just things like reviews of games. I’ve become incredibly introverted and selfishly concerned. I write and write and write – the amount of text that I pour into my diary text file is pretty insane – yet almost none of it is worth sharing. It feels like I have degraded, and that going to university has degraded me, which is incredibly sad.
Not sure what the point of posting this was, other than to note my experience tonight with reading those old posts. I really hope that I can regain my interest in the link between my theoretical ethics and politics and the rest of the world, and worry just a little less about myself.