Sophie Nguyen Week #12 - BAM!
When I was writing my POAS, I was listening to the same background music, since it is more like white noise than anything else. So, I have decided that I am going to write about the power of POAS. While reading each of the last blogs written by this cohort, there was a common theme: people talking about their POAS, stress from the POAS essay, and other POAS related things. I also had my fair share of panic while writing the last blog, as it only felt like time wasted while I could be writing my essay. This has really shown the effect that essays have on students. Especially with the early deadline offering ten percent extra credit, I watched as my classmates and friends panicked and worked until the very last second (me too, of course).
POAS showed me that essays, usually being a large part of our grade, have a lot of influence over our mental state. People lost sleep, confidence in their own writing, and (seemingly) their sanity. It also brought out the true nature of many people. Some people have been calmly working on the essay ever since it was assigned, and others, like myself, scrambled to get things done.
I titled this blog “BAM!” because POAS felt like a punch to the gut. The type where the wind is knocked out of you and it takes a moment to get a breather. The original panic of the large essay ahead of me, the realization that the due date came faster than I thought it would, then the wait for my grade. Although I have only described it as if it was a form of abuse, I actually believe that this essay gave me a lesson that I needed to learn at some point. That I should stop procrastinating before it punches me in the gut again.
Hi Sophie,
ReplyDelete"BAM!" is way too subtle. I get what you mean, but POAS was like a truck to the gut. That week was complete misery, and it left me in that state for well after the assignments due date. I really hope my grade was decent; otherwise, that truck to the gut would have been more of a plane to the gut. This year, I adopted the procrastination mindset much more than I did my freshman and sophomore years. And yes, it's been great. However, I'm struggling to return to my former self. I hope that once the work settles, I'll be able to regain the motivation I once had to strive for more. The workload certainly hasn't helped one bit.
Sincerely,
Sean Wang
Hi Sophie,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your points and must add that I also felt a punch to my gut from POAS. The entire week before it was due, I was contemplating between getting no sleep at all and turning in early or relaxing and having another week to do, in realization of the lack of progress I had made in the first month that it was assigned. I was excited to create new habits during second semester and stop procrastinating, and honestly, I felt like I was doing a pretty good job until POAS. However, in the time crunch that I put myself into, I found that I wrote more efficiently and actually liked what I was producing. I just hope to work on my bad habit of procrastination for the rest of the semester and hopefully create good practices that will stick with me.
Hi Sophie,
ReplyDeleteI, too, felt a punch in the gut working on POAS. It is definitely the most brutal essay I've ever written in terms of sheer rigor and time consumed. While I didn't procrastinate on my essay, I didn't give it my all initially, and that came to bite me one day before the POAS deadline, where I decided to redo my entire paper to make it much better. I ended up pulling an all-nighter to get it done, but I felt an immense amount of pride in my work after I finished. Working on POAS taught me a valuable lesson in how to approach my work, and I don't regret it at all.
Sincerely,
Krish
Hi Sophie,
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure sniper riffles with silencers don't go BAM, they just kill you. I also listened to the exact same cafe mix as I worked on my POAS. Fun fact: it is the longest youtube video I've ever finished at 8 hours long. Honestly it was pretty comical when I realized the seemingly "infinite loop" of cafe sounds had stopped. Personally, I was lucky enough to only have comments due on the same week as my POAS, but I could most definitely see the panic of people in their posts as I commented. POAS really was like having a bloodthirsty lion chasing after you, a beast that just will not stop until you have died. While I wish I could say that it was a "wakeup call" to me, I'm sure that I will innately return to procrastination as soon as another big assignment comes up.
When you're in pain, you swear that you would do anything to never feel it again. But once that pain goes again, at least for me, one thought swims through my head: “I wouldn’t mind experiencing it again.” This is essentially what POAS is to me, a painful experience that has transformed into some sort of masochistic pleasure—or maybe it is the process of creating something that is invaluable. Someone actually told me the reason behind this masochistic feeling is to incentivize childbirth because of how painful it is. And from an evolutionary perspective, I’ll believe it. Going back to the topic of POAS, I would say that writing that research paper was the most tedious process ever, but there is a redeeming quality to it—writing POAS was a test for tenacity. It showed me that if I really cared, I could go without food and sleep.
ReplyDeleteHey Sophie, you described the POAS paper perfectly; we all saw "the blow" coming, yet it was unavoidable, and it hit hard. I've come to directly associate essays with stress in my three years of being in high school. I can't have one without the other at this point. It's really unfortunate, since the ability to write a good essay is a really helpful skill to have, but my negative mindset will probably last through college. I'm really glad you actually decided to make POAS the topic of your blog, since most of us have just been endlessly complaining about it in the comments of each other's posts. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Sophie,
ReplyDeleteI agree that the POAS paper was a large impact on everybody's lives and taught everyone a valuable lesson. The lesson against procrastination, however, might not stick to everybody for very long. The problem with high school classes now is that doing one assignment slightly later sets off a chain effect that quickly snowballs. In this way, students have to put in a monumental effort to set their work back on track just so that they are slightly ahead of the deadline instead of right in front of it. Students rarely feel that it is worth the effort, so they get back onto a deadline by deadline schedule (me included). Has this happened to you yet?
Sincerely,
Raymond Yu
Hi Sophie,
ReplyDeleteI think we can all agree on how rough the few weeks of doing POAS was. This assignment has decreased a lot of the procrastination I would do (i wrote like 3 pages of my POAS on the day it was due). I procrastinated way too much, and this project taught me to not procrastinate. I really hated the fact that there were weekly assignments that were given on top of POAS that really took all of our time away. I am happy that this is finally over.
Sincerely,
Vivan Waghela
Hey Soph!
ReplyDeleteFor starters, thank you for the youtube video. The ambient study music is really relaxing to finish our blog assignment to, as I try cranking these comments out last minute. I totally agree with how much of a "BAM!" POAS is/was. Regardless of how much you liked your POAS (I did mine on Kendrick, one of my favorite artists), it was just so daunting. I find myself changing my paragraph over and over again because in no way am I satisfied with my writing. Especially with an assignment that big, it is so scary to think about how many small errors you can make without even realizing it. Thanks for sharing:)