Claire's Random Thoughts

I can’t explain why, but I have been thinking about my college applications more these past few days, even though I have no control over them currently. If I don’t get into the colleges of my choice, I think I’ll just shift the blame to affirmative action.

I knew I hated affirmative action since I first learned what it was. Affirmative action (or positive discrimination) is a policy or a program whose stated goal is to redress past or present discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity, generally concerning education, employment or seats in parliament and/or government. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, there’s only one problem: IT DOESN’T WORK!

Lately, I’ve learned that nothing that sounds appealing works. Ideas that sound good are typically just better at neglecting and concealing flaws. The intention of affirmative action may be good, but all it does is discriminate against groups that are stronger academically. It was intended for reverse discrimination against minorities, but it just further discriminates against Asians. If supporters of affirmative action truly wanted it to function like its definition suggests, then all minorities, including Asians, should be given the advantage. Asians were not treated much better than other minority groups, such as African Americans and Native Americans, but we still suffer from affirmative action. That’s like double-discrimination against us in an attempt to bring equal opportunity to everybody else. First, let’s define equal opportunity. Equal opportunity should mean that everybody gets judged with the same standards. That way, everybody, regardless of race or status, has equal consideration in the application process. Supporters of affirmative action think of equal opportunity as giving a handicap to minorities by lessening others.

Policies with intentions to equalize society simply do not work. Affirmative action, like communism, sounds good but does not work in practice. Communism does not work in practice, simply because we’re human. Wow, what a great idea! We’re all equal! Everybody works hard but only takes what he/she needs! NOT! Equal opportunity should mean equal treatment — NOT adjustments that undermine the superior to give the inferior undeserved and unearned advantages.

Again, I’ll blame affirmative action if I get any rejections.

I’ve come to the conclusion that keeping track of my schedule while I’m doing something actually is an effective way of time management. I don’t develop a schedule ahead of time, because I find it difficult to predict how much time things actually take, but logging everything I do in random increments has actually helped me save time.

Here’s what works for me:
Every time I want to switch tasks, am having difficulty with something, or just plain randomly thinking about doing so, I write down the time, what I’m doing, and my thoughts. This way, I know exactly what I’m doing at any given time, and I don’t get these mysteriously lost hours. I’m sure that most of us have noticed that times don’t seem to add up properly. E.g. you could spend what you think is 15 minutes doing something, 20 minutes doing something else, and 10 minutes doing a third thing but lose 3 hours in the process. Since I started keeping track of my time, I have not only gotten a better sense of how long things take but have also been able to see the numbers add up properly. I seriously feel like I have more time, simply because I’ve been keeping track of it. In addition to that, writing something down periodically helps promote brief mental breaks from studying to prevent getting overwhelmed.

My Sample Logs (try this, it somehow works)

I took the differential equations book out of my backpack intending to study

8:59
Stupid, but an algebraic part of homogeneous equations is bothering me. I feel stupid, because I should be way beyond that stage. I solved a randomly chosen exact equation easily without help. Yay?

9:09
I think I’ll go back to linear and homogeneous later. At this point, I could still kind of get one on the test, but I still don’t understand them very well. Now, to the annoying Bernoulli, Ricatti, and Clairaut equations. There will probably be plenty of those on the test.

9:19
I seriously think the book is making up algebra now. When Bristol does substitutions on the board, the steps make sense, but when the book does, everything seems so random. Now I really wish that I had put the proper pabel on each section of my notes. I’m going to dry my hair now to take a mental break; hopefully this will make more sense later.

9:26
Hmm…It actually is pretty cold. I just turned on the heater. Now, back to the math stuyding I was supposed to complete two days ago. I’m going to look at the notes that Bristol gave us when he was explaining yesterday’s problems. NO, KEEP OFF THE COMPUTER!!!

9:30
It’s sad how I just put a jacket on.

9:31
I’m horrible; I already want to wander around the house aimlessly. If I were not recording my thoughts and actions, I would probably not be able to restrain myself

9:41
Ok, I cheated a little bit, because I was too lazy to do the algebra (which by the way, I’m 5 years ahead of which really shouldn’t be a problem), but I really think I should be able to figure out on the test. This is the most I’ve studied for a math test this year.

9:45
Just got up for a glass of water. IGNORE THE COMPUTER! Now, I’m going to go to the homogeneous section, pick a random odd problem, solve it without help, and check my answer in the back of the book.

9:51
Shouldn’t udx or xdu equal zero? Since u and x are like constants to be differentiated with respect to a different variable, they should simply be zero…BUT THEY’RE NOT!!! Ok, maybe the annoying part isn’t algebra after all. It’s calculus that I didn’t learn properly

10:15
Stupid linear and homogeneous…they make a little sense but…alright, Bernoullis are more important. Back to those.

10:20
Wait a minute…linears are required for solving Bernoullis…back to those, I guess. After I brush my teeth.

10:28
Since something in the linear explanations is really bothering me, I’ll turn on the computer for and only for looking for better explained examples. I vow to use it for that and that only.

10:34
Wow, gmail was amazing. When I tried to break my vow and check my email, I got an internal server error. (Seriously, I wasn’t kidding)

10:54
Huh? It’s 10:54? I just had to log on my email and a forum, didn’t I? Well, at least I found some better formulas for an easy way to solve linears, Bernoullis, and Ricattas…I hope…I’d better try the new formulas now.

11:00
I’m really losing it now. I’m keep thinking about Ricatta cheese, and I’m even salivating. I’m just going to put those formulas on my notecard and use them if I can’t get the problems done the proper way, and it’s off to bed.

If you’re a good time manager, then you would probably argue against my method. It could be considered ineffective, because it takes times to log everything, but by using this method, I was able to restrain myself from unproductive work much better than I normally could. It didn’t seem like I was doing much during the time I logged and showed here, but it was too much more than my normal study sessions. I’m finding that when I don’t use this method, I get lost in my thoughts, do nothing, and let hours pass me by with little accomplished (like today).

Reader’s Digest Version
1. Log what you are doing, so you’re more likely to feel guilty if you decide to do something unproductive
2. This type of logging may seem to waste time, but you still spend much less time logging than you would doing unproductive work
3. Logging also provides brief mental breaks that are necessary once in a while
4. If you’re already a good time manager, then this is probably not for you
Bottom line: If you log your actions, your schedule will become more organized, even without planned scheduling. You will also be much less likely to engage in unproductive work

One day an expert in time management was speaking to a group of business students and, to drive home a point, used an illustration those students will never forget. As he stood in front of the group of high-powered over-achievers, he said, “Okay, time for a quiz.” He then pulled out a one-gallon wide-mouth mason jar and set it on the table in front of him.

Cited from clean-funnies

For some reason, I kept on thinking about this after I read it. To be honest, I liked the eager beaver’s explanation better. “The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard you can always fit some more things in it.” After thinking, however, maybe fitting everything in isn’t really good idea. See the image below for why;)

I’m still stuck thinking about my big rocks. I realized that I seriously need to sort out my priorities and keep track of my time, so I am going to start a new experiment. Has anyone noticed that you could spend what you think is 15 minutes doing something, 20 minutes doing something else, and 10 minutes doing a third thing but lose 3 hours in the process. This simply doesn’t make sense to me, but it happens all the time. That’s where this experiment is going to help. In random increments, whenever this crosses my mind, I’m going to log what I’m thinking and what’s going on. Of course I’m going to write down the times for my logs too, so I can see what I’m wasting on the little things that I could be spending on the big rocks. After a couple days of logging, I’ll post my results and analysis.