A Look Into the Life of a Scatterbrain
Katie Tandler | Life Section Manager

I'll be the first to point out that I'm not exactly the best when it comes to getting my work done. It's an affliction that has plagued me all throughout middle school and high school. Small wonder that it should follow me to college to some degree. This problem, however, no longer stems from slacking. It comes, instead, from being a first-rate scatterbrain.

Allow me to elaborate. There are times, you see, where I simply cannot concentrate. Various little things like trying (and sometimes failing) to get to class on time, cramming for tests at the last minute, tending to lunch, running errands, and constantly checking to make sure I get to the right place at the right time (and on the right day) all take up the bulk of my time during the day. My roommate will tell you it takes me at LEAST three tries to get out the door every time I try to head out. I'll forget my bottle of water, turn around (usually I barely make it past the doorway), come back. Start off again, feel in my pocket, find I'm missing my keys, turn around, come back. Get to the stairwell, start down...then realize I forgot my notebook. And so it goes, every time.

When I first sit down at the computer after a long day of class, usually I'm too frazzled to write. So I sit and gather my thoughts until I get to the point where I can actually focus. Of course, by this time, my friends are usually online, and since the articles I have to write for the following week aren't yet an urgent priority, I set that aside so I can talk for a while. And, before I know it, all that wonderful mental focus has up and diffused. So ends another unproductive day.

Now, before you go thinking I'm a complete waste of space, let me bring up the fact that I do get some work done. I do a fairly decent job of keeping up with my actual classwork, which was always my problem back in grade school. Classwork, however, is actually something of a simpler deal in my case: they tell you want they want, and you do it. End of story. With something like Whim, we pretty much volunteer ourselves for the work. And, in such cases, I have proven to be continually overambitious in terms of what I think I can do. I have always, in the past, been one who was notorious for coming up with dozens of ideas and following through with very few of them (if any at all). So I suppose part of the problem with getting my work done stems from taking on too much of a workload in the first place. But I digress.

So, Monday night rolls around, and the midnight deadline is several hours away. I warm up, get settled down, focus, gain my bearings, maybe find a little music to help me tune out the outside noise... And it's already eight o' clock--time for me to trudge over to Curie Hall for another thrilling evening of Astronomy lab. Joy.

An hour to an hour and a half later (for my sanity's sake, I'm quite thankful that the lab has yet to last the full two hours scheduled), I roll back into the dorm, kickstart my brain after a positively mind-numbing stretch of simplistic math and pointless line-drawing, and get back to getting back to work. For the first time all day, I actually start writing something. I start off with Submitted For Your Approval, since that's the simplest. But of course, I usually spend at least half an hour playing with sites in order to pick which ones I want to use for the week. Sometimes, the decision's pretty tough, and I end up wading around in web nonsense for upwards of an hour. Finally, I manage to get it together. That's one down.

But then, by this time, I usually need dinner.

Even though my humble abode in Pocahontas Hall is merely a stone's throw away from Dalton and the Terrace Shops, by this time the only thing open is the Muse Underground. Which means I have to make a 20-minute round trip for takeout--not that I particularly mind. I like Muse. It's just a bit of a long walk. I get back to Pokie once again, take a few minutes to clear space off my desk, take another 10 to 15 minutes to eat--work and meals just don't go together well for me--and settle in yet again to get back to business.

By this time, it's most likely 10:30. I may have a few lines done for my next article--at best, a paragraph or two. That's when the next round of distractions comes soaring in in the form of a spunky neighbor of ours.

Now, don't get me wrong. She's a very nice girl. Very funny, very friendly, and quite often in real need of some advice from my roommate. She's also very energetic, and quite...well, loud. One of the things I have yet to learn how to tune out is a conversation going on directly behind me--and in this little matchbox of a room, everything goes on right behind me. I may get a few more lines out, with some valiant effort, but I rarely ever manage to finish anything until she leaves. And she sometimes pops in and out quite frequently. Mondays are certainly no exception.

(At this point, it should be noted that this article has been set aside, untouched, for ten days. It is now 10 P.M. on the Monday night that this article is due. The author is ahead of schedule this week because she was sick and slept all day, thus missing all her classes and her 8 P.M. lab. We now return to the article, already in progress.)

So, given all these interruptions, it's quite easy to see why it's difficult for me to get my work done. With all these attacks upon my fragile concentration skills, not to mention my tendency to wander off within the writing itself, it's a wonder I can ever get to the--whoops! Hang on just a minute....