My November went extremely downhill…

Back in November of second year, I wrote a blog post about being overwhelmed by deadlines and I dubbed it ‘Novdeadber’ because that’s what it feels like. Luckily, in Law, we don’t have midterms or tests during term. Instead, we’ve got competitions, moots, and non-assessed essays, and application deadlines for training contracts/pupillages, vacation schemes, Open Days, and grad jobs (if you’re not going into law).

For me, personally, the month started off pretty strong! I was on top of lectures and tutorials and was picking up some good momentum, as I had a good weekly routine going. I was ticking all my boxes: I was keeping on top of tutorials, I was spending on applications, and I was being sociable. But then, I started slipping.

I was suddenly overcome with the desire to take weekends off to relax and then spend every waking moment on grad job applications during the week. By the second weekend of November, I was behind on lectures and I had two interviews to do by the end of that week. I found myself spending an entire day on one thing at a time. On the Tuesday of that week, I was in careers events and appointments all day to prep for my interview. On the Wednesday, on top of interview prep, I had Law Ball committee meetings and music stuff to do all day. On the Thursday, I had my interview in the morning and then spent the rest of the day on an essay for my Canadian degree. By the time it was Friday, I did my other interview and then took the rest of the day off because I was so exhausted from the last three days. It turned out that just taking the one day off wasn’t enough, so I also took Saturday off.

That Sunday (and now we’re into the third week of November), I suddenly realised that I hadn’t so much as thought about uni work for the past few days and I had two tutorials to do for the end of the week. I spent the entire week dragging out the 2 tutorials by doing a little bit each day, went to the tutorials on the Friday, and then did nothing the entire weekend. I proceeded to do nothing until Wednesday morning, when I had a dissertation meeting (well into the fourth week of November now). Then, I went back to doing nothing until Saturday, because I had a new dissertation deadline for Sunday. Come Monday, I was riding on a being-productive high, so I did grad job applications all day in the library. That was pretty exhausting, so I went back to doing nothing until Friday, when I had my last tutorial.

So, this is the story (all) about how (my life got flipped turned upside-down) I started off being really productive and motivated and then ended up being really unproductive and unmotivated. This is a pretty typical cycle for me. I can go from sitting in the library all day working on 3 different things in one day to sitting in my bed all day watching Orange is the New Black scarily quickly. It just takes one day for me to slip down the slippery slope of unproductiveness.

I’m still figuring it out, but I’ll get there. I know that the second I enter into a work environment, it will be different; I’m just universitied-out. It is my sixth year of uni, after all…