For the past few weeks I have officially been deemed as a final year student, a fourth year and a young woman on the brink of crossing the borders from education into the ‘real’ world. In fact, just yesterday I spent a number of hours browsing through graduate job placements, post graduate courses, believing I was spending my time wisely, time invested into my potentially successful future. Of course this ‘research’ was utter bullocks. Of course this time spent, ploughing through prospectuses was all a ploy to avoid the real task in hand: The actual work that is going to get me the degree I require to obtain one of these jobs I seem to be fervently searching for. I knew my search was pointless when I started veering into the ‘Accountancy’ placements. I hadn’t been near mathematics since GCSE and spent most of the time giggling at the back with my best friend over Cosmo articles. After the terms dragged on in secondary school our teacher finally admitted defeat and seemed to gain immunity to our incessant giggling knowing, that despite the fact we played dumb, deep down there was some scrap of intelligence...deep, deep down. Of course we both gained successful grades (our skill for blagging apparently began at an early age) but I left year 11 resolutely knowing that mathematics was not my forte. So it seems even more ridiculous now to look at jobs that require ‘a head for figures’. Whilst reading such job criteria I fooled myself into believing that because I once taught myself trigonometry and had a spell of playing around in statistics with a psychology experiment, I was therefore a numerical goddess. Sure I could add up figures of market sales and work out percentages and other such nonsense. I’ve simply avoided that area of expertise because I was just so good, they would be threatened. Naturally these thoughts did not emerge in my literary, linguistically talented (eh hem) mind but it does prove exactly what kind of mind tangents I was running off on that very day.
The fact is, like most students I can be horrendously good at procrastinating. Sure when it’s something I really have my heart set on I am Little Miss Motivated. However, give me a sheet of grammatical exercises or a piece of text that has no obvious relevance to the week’s work and you could probably watch my eyes glaze over so thickly you would think Krispy Kreme had been at my set of sight enablers. Rather than focusing, I find myself doing things that have no relevance to the task in hand or indeed life. I can find an itch on my arm incredibly demanding. The little island that I have been tending to on my phone suddenly needs a great deal of attention to cope with the overload of imaginary customers. On some level, despite finding them terrifying, I am happy to see the wasp that has invaded my room just so that I can run away from the books...I mean the wasp. Tea becomes paramount, hunger pangs are stronger and I will take time out of my busy schedule to read my horoscope just in case it tells me that all Sagittarians will die if they complete a literature essay.
It is at this point of rambling that I realise the most telling sign of all. I can take time to write a blog and meticulously, but possibly fail at, editing it. Whilst, sat next to me is the glare of obligation from an English literature essay about Aristotle’s viewpoint on tragedy and of course the glare is given the cold shoulder. I keep telling myself I’m writing something that could contribute to my desire to be a writer but on this specific blog, at this specific time, I can only admit one thing. Hi, my name is Laura Milne and I am a procrastinator.
