#chaotic perfectionism

[memorygirls]

Found item selection so far, for my new office! I need to find so many more cute frames and arty curios.

The Hanging Garden by The Cure plays

[draculaswidow]

Become so good at your chosen field that people start thinking you're the Devil's prodigy

[deesi-academia]

ADHD and unattainable perfectionism had a baby and called it 'chaotic academia'

[studentbyday]

{ 07.11.24 } · { 50 days of routine } · { day 9 }

i read ahead for week 2 of the CBT workbook, so i can plan when to work on it throughout the week, and it just got hardddd. it's all the fault of “behavioral activation” and needing to be “accountable” and make more plans. 😂 i already have to make plans for schoolwork and i low-key hate it 😂 ooohhh welllll 🙃 i do wanna get better...so... we're not gonna give up. 💪🏻

A bit less phone usage today bc the grace period for the global health assignment ends today...idk if i was actually more “productive” tho bc i think i ended up being a bit too perfectionistic with it considering alllll the other things i needed to do (i didn't get to all of them). idk, what's done is done. 😑

📖 a room of one's own – virginia woolf 🎧 overwhelmed... but still trying – bunny hop up high

[academic-vampire]

This is the kind of shit I’m writing on a Wednesday afternoon…

-(Benjamin Franklin, “Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection,” 1790)

[sheisanimposter]

yeah, regularly eating and sleeping sounds cool, but have you ever gotten a perfect score on a paper?

[chaosartacademia]

"Although I maintain that if she were more perfect, she would be less interesting." - Anne Brontë, The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall

[berryblu-soda]

(oc talk)

making myself sad perhaps bc fletcher´s color was stormy grey and the colder area of yellow, but in the present his color scheme hinges on a warm almost orangy yellow from a scarf Claire gave him that he clung onto like a lifeline after she left

she doesnt even remember she did that!!!! they were kids and she lost random scarves coats and hats all the time-

[chaoticaesthete]

the compulsive urges list of a bibliophile:

• to organize your books in accordance with the authors

• to keep redoing your TBR

• to read all the works of one author before moving on to the next

• to take up reading challenges and end up with more books

• to realize that PERFECTIONISM IS BULLSHIT AND YOU CAN READ HOWEVER YOU WANT TO

• to again get back to your 'MY TBR HAS TO BE PERFECT' personality

[elasgottoomuchfreetime]

Click the answer that doesn’t apply

[writerintheworld]

Academic Monster

My parents are the type of people who are like “try your best and we’ll be happy”,  but now I have this evil academic validation monster in my head and no matter what I do I can’t get rid of it. So instead I just end up studying all day and night and raise my expectations for myself. I mean I love studying, it's just different.

[thebookoffrank]

sorry for the inactivity i am in my 'going unhinged over assignments that definitely do not need this level of research to them' era. in my 'sleeping for 2 hours, waking up in a panic about my writing not being flawless and perfect enough' era.

my bad.

[deesi-academia]

Anxiety and ADHD together is like *overthinking at 2am* *perfectionism* *academic stress* *listening to music 24/7 to block the brain* *reading stories and making them your own to escape* *binge watching mystery shows because you NEED to know what happened NOW* *crying randomly because it's Too Much* *why am I sad again* *this is too much joy it can't possibly last* *I cannot fail this task* *random wave of anger and annoyance (which was very unfair on my part, I realize later)* *am I just a disappointment?* *I'm sorry I didn't mean to* *I'm sorry I'll try* *I'm sorry-

[studentbyday]

oops! i did it again. lessons from this school year...

Hey, you remember that post I made about my winter term priorities? HAHAHAHAHahaha ha ha. That plan totally went to shit, but it's all part of the journey, right? 😅 (Tbh, it's quite difficult to make a conscious effort to change yourself when the default response to being and feeling busy is to go on autopilot -> all the unconscious habits, even if unhealthy, take control, and bc it's unconscious, you don't realize it until it gets quite bad! anyway! no more! my future plans make it so this will be impossible to do while still retaining some sense of sanity. so to prep, we're gonna slowly implement little changes so hopefully it's not so overwhelming that i give up)

🧘🏻‍♀️ comparing mindsets in fall and winter term

Fall term was not that bad bc I had 2 STEM subjects I really really loved and was interested in (biochem and mol bio 💕), and despite their difficulty, that love and interest and the feeling that "I am in the right field for me" kept me positive. There were times I thought I would feel burnout symptoms if I wasn't careful, but I really think that positivity protected me from the worst of it.

Winter term, however...I had one favorite subject: moral philosophy, which led to me wistfully dreaming about an AU in which I double majored in philosophy and piano performance, lol. After the highs of biochem and mol bio and the natural ease with which the bits of info flowed together in those subjects, I did not enjoy pharmacology or the 2nd half of psyc as much -> loss of interest -> negativity and feeling like I'm in the wrong field bc how dare I not like pharmacology (or psychology) as much as the other life science-y subjects when it's really so important for us to survive and thrive! 😅 I mean, there were times I could get that spark from pharmacology or psyc, but it wasn't often enough or intense enough to keep me consistently inspired throughout the semester. The feeling of "maybe I don't have what it takes and I'm in the wrong field" was compounded by the re-realization that there's sm to know of bioinformatics and I struggle to know any of it! Persevering is important, but it's harder to persevere with a negative mindset.

😤 what went wrong this school year and what i learned from it

I still struggle with perfectionism (and bc of it, procrastination). While it might not be as bad as it was in high school, I still spent too long on assignments that weren't worth much and during finals season, was so scared of getting less than 90% just to keep up my A+ streak. Like, I'm pretty sure no one who cares to know your GPA cares about whether you have an A+ streak or not. I have too high a threshold for what is a "disappointing" grade. I also struggle with deep regret about how I haven't mastered everything they throw at us in each course... definitely an unrealistic expectation, especially as the proportion of new info to absorb increases with each course. I did what I could using what I knew to do, so it is what it is. I may find ways to make improvements and learn more, but I won't beat myself up for not having known to do those things in the past.

Did not use effective study methods. Since first year, my problem has been keeping up with the readings and my solution has been to just use typed outline notes. It worked for the first few years when it was mostly review from previous courses with a few new concepts in between. But as I progress through my degree, the proportion of completely new info is increasing. This notetaking method won't work anymore bc it just causes cognitive overload, especially during exam season (when I've mostly forgotten the details of everything that isn't smth I've already known for years). E.g. for pharmacology, I got so bogged down by the details of all the drug classes that I didn't see the big picture and so didn't organize the info according to it. This made it hard to see patterns and better chunk the info. I was so stressed during finals season bc of this (and the sheer amount of notes that I had to read for psyc 😭). What makes it feel like even more of a problem is that the cognitive overload problem from my notetaking method has been a thing for all other uni courses thus far, it's just that pharmacology was the first time I needed to create a stronger connecting thread between the otherwise disparate pieces of info (drug classes). In all other courses, that thread was part of the nature of the topic being studied so I eventually understood it as I kept going and mentally re-organized it in my brain...but even then it was hodge-podge and so my depth of mastery was and is so flimsy, and every semester I leave feeling drained and like I wasted the opportunity to maximize my learning. (How dramatic I get about this is also probably tied to my perfectionism, but I still think it would greatly benefit future me to change my notetaking style.)

🎓 advice for future me

Look at the academic calendar, specifically the faculty course descriptions. Look at how many hours they say you should expect to spend on each activity in the course. Try to use those learning hours as a guide for your schedule so that you don't spend too long on an item that isn't worth much. If there isn't such a breakdown, assume one based on whatever they give you or other courses and adjust from there.

Be a more efficient reader by skimming the text first so you can map the flow of info in a way that best creates ease of understanding/synthesis/memory (e.g. via an outline, tree diagram, flowchart, mind map, or simple drawings - and noticing when a list/outline will NOT be helpful bc it'll just be too overwhelming and not easy to compare/contrast info and see patterns). I knowww you've survived thus far without doing it this way and done well, BUT with this many courses, the increasing complexity of each subject, and the overload of info in each, you WILL need to do this to make quicker work of the readings, save you sooo much stress during exam seasons, and improve how much you learn while in school which is the real goal you've wanted to achieve all this time. Don't repeat the mistake you made in pharmacology. And it really doesn't have to be aesthetic and you definitely should NOT get caught up with it if you really wanna learn. You could just use one color for everything and a highlighter and just basic shapes/lines - that alone can be way more effective than boring paragraphs/lists or a colorful, overly complex diagram that'll just distract you from the main point.

Create a realistic daily routine (wake-up and sleep times, start and end times for schoolwork) and be strict about following it. Set your non-negotiables for personal goals to keep up with alongside your schoolwork bc academics aren't everything. Remember how you regretted not devoting more time to extra-curriculars and other skills in high school which would've rounded you out as a person. You can try theming the parts of the day so that you don't have to think about what task you should do first after study breaks and keep up the momentum (e.g. mornings for readings and notes, afternoons for active recall/homework). Then you can live the rest of the day after school as structured or unstructured as you wish. If this strategy doesn't work for you, you don't have to use it.

Take advantage of interleaving so you don't get bored. Whether by following the theming strategy or just switching subjects every hour, idc if you aren't done yet, you better switch bc the second consecutive hour of the same thing is never as effective as the first.

[darkacademiaarchivist]

*muttering under my breath* it doesn't have to be perfect it just has to be done, it doesn't have to be perfect it just has to be done, it doesn't have to be perfect it just has to be done

[coming-of-age-witch]

it takes my soul out of me to try something anew and afresh, like try a hand at some games and all- its just like either im good at it or i am not at it.