Sneaky Mind Games
I have found a new purpose for the blog. I don't think it would work for just any blog. This 203 blog is unique in a very important way. Like most of you, I have many assignments due next week (five in fact) and as anyone who is in a similar situation will know, people who have essays to write will more often than not try to avoid ways to avoid actually writing them.
So what did I do when I was faced with the idea of how to put off writing these mind numbing assignments? Well I went and read the 203 blog of course!! Because my brain told me
"Hey Andrew! The blog is a legitimate academic excercise and it gets marked and stuff so by reading it, and eventually contributing to it YOU ARE WORKING!" Well I thought that was just super so I've now read heaps of blog. Although I have yelled at the screen when people have poor grammar and spelling (even though mine may not be perfect, I think it's fun), but have essentially achieved very little.
Thus, I conclude that this blog has tricked me. I wonder if anyone else feels the same?
-Andrew
So what did I do when I was faced with the idea of how to put off writing these mind numbing assignments? Well I went and read the 203 blog of course!! Because my brain told me
"Hey Andrew! The blog is a legitimate academic excercise and it gets marked and stuff so by reading it, and eventually contributing to it YOU ARE WORKING!" Well I thought that was just super so I've now read heaps of blog. Although I have yelled at the screen when people have poor grammar and spelling (even though mine may not be perfect, I think it's fun), but have essentially achieved very little.
Thus, I conclude that this blog has tricked me. I wonder if anyone else feels the same?
-Andrew
posted by Anonymous at 10:57 pm
4 Comments:
I know exactly how you feel.
;)
I use Firefox, so in one tab I keep the class blog. The other, whatever I feel like slacking off to. When my girlfriend comes in and says "Do your work!" I can click over to that tab and smile. "It is work honey!"
... but that still leaves the problem of the work still being there.
Erm, Andrew et al, there's a touch of what Jean-Paul Sartre calls 'bad faith' going on here, namely using some external factor to absolve yourself of responsibility for your actions (like "my brain told me" as if their brain was distinct and external to them). No one is seriously saying that their procrastination and writing block would be any less in the absence of this blog, are they? That they wouldn't have just as easily found some other excuse? That somehow that *@#* lecturer Goode has contributed to their downfall by setting this damned thing up as "work"... I've no doubt there are far more seductive online distractions than this blog, but nice try!!
Ah-ha, you've said it now - there's no taking it back. It has been archived for all eternity. [evil laughter] Incidentally, I think I once had a life before I decided to incorporate blogging into my teaching...
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