Metacognition: Organizing My "Man Drawer"

Before I even start trying to describe my epic battle with my junk drawer, I'd like to open with a very British video that reminded me of this assignment:

This is the most accurate video about junk drawers in the history of videos about junk drawers (which I'm sure is extraordinarily extensive and detailed). Though this clip focused on "Man Drawers", I'm sure that everyone has a junk drawer, regardless of their age, sex, or anything else. If it isn't a drawer, it's a corner, or perhaps a bin or a countertop, where you throw everything that you think you'll need in the future but rarely end up using. Old keys, spelling tests from the third grade, candy wrappers, photos from circa 1981 that you're not even sure how you got in the first place--it's all fair game.

My entire room is my "man drawer". I consider myself a professional when it comes to living in a disorganized fashion. I have a legitimate inability to stay neat and tidy. I just don't like it. It feels unnatural and strange. My bed stays unmade, my clothes stay on the dresser, my books stay on the floor, and my papers stay...everywhere. Finding things in my room is kind of like playing a giant game of "Where's Waldo?". Paradoxically, I'm a total clean freak. My floors stay insanely clean, even if they're covered in books and papers. My clothes are always clean and washed, as are my bed sheets and pillow cases. I dust everything practically every other day. So, essentially, I'm a clean freak with an organizing problem. Yeah, that seems about right.

Alright, find my history paper!

I decided that my entire room was too big of a project (well, actually I decided that I was too lazy to do it and I had episodes of "Sherlock" to watch and mashed potatoes to eat), so I decided to conquer one corner of it. The most disorganized corner. I prepped for the occasion very nicely--I got some Swiffer pads for any dust, I made an iTunes playlist, I stocked my room with garbage bags, and I even got my practically unused bookshelf semi-ready to house the large collection of books I had scattered on the floor. I was actually pretty excited to clean it--it was going to be a little bit of a challenge.

So, it began.

I turned on my music and went through what had to have been about three hundred papers about everything from the election, to advertisements for bacon soap (I'm utterly serious), to old chemistry papers, to drawings I did during lunch. After sifting through those I went on to the photographs. I have a cork board hanging in that general area, and occasionally a couple photos will find their way into the junk pile below. There were only a couple dog-eared dilapidated photos from the crew holiday party last year, and a few Christmas cards I had lost under the mountain of papers, but I was still glad to find them. With most of the papers and photos gone, the clutter was reduced significantly and I could go on to organizing books. The bulk of my work was in this category.

First, I handled paperbacks. Many of them were old Roald Dahl titles like "Matilda" and "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar" and assorted books that I had read years ago during my fairy-tale/knights stage like "The Song of the Lioness" books and a dumbed-down copy of "Beowulf". On top of those were things I had read recently, like "The Secret Agent" by Joseph Conrad and a couple books on film and cinematography, as well as my favorite book, "I Am America (And So Can You!" by Stephen Colbert. After the lighter stuff had been cleared away, I got to the heavy lifting. I saw my hardcover copies of every Harry Potter Book, the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and my definitive book of every Sherlock Holmes story ever published. At the very bottom of the pile, I retrieved my huge, ten-pound brick of Shakespeare that I had bought for fifty cents at the Irish Heritage Center (which I found incredibly funny). I shoved all of those in the closet, slammed the door shut, and continued on my merry way.

All that was left after papers, photos, and books, was the pile of assorted knickknacks. This encompassed everything from a music box that played "Let It Be", to a mini-TARDIS that I had carved out of balsa wood, to orange sticky notes, to my George Harrison documentary, and a billion other things. There were pieces of questionable Halloween candy, unmarked CDs, old pens with no ink, ancient letters, newspapers from 2008, a Scooby-Doo bobble head, and even a squashed Confederate cap that I bought on my 7th grade trip to Springfield. After each layer came another. The bottom-most layer was composed of a fine layer of dust that I hadn't gotten to for at least three months, a spider or two, some confetti, and some old legos.

Looking back on that last paragraph, I believe that I sound like a hoarder. Not to worry! It was remedied. I threw 75% of the crap in the trash, organized the remaining quarter, dusted the floor, washed the floor, dusted the furniture, and put away all the clothes residing on the dresser. At the end, I felt exactly like this:

One thing that I didn't realize until I completed my task? How big my room is. It's not particularly enormous, but it's a decent size room once you clean it up a bit. After cleaning, I think I seriously added a 5'x5' square to my room. A very clean, polished 5'x5' square that gives me so much more room to neatly organize things. I'm trying, see?!

In the end, I'm pretty glad that I organized my crap-corner/"man drawer". It's much nicer to walk through, it doesn't look as unappealing, and it's gotten my mom off my back a lot. I feel a little lost without my pile-o'-things at the ready, but I think that it was something that needed to be done. I feel a little more at ease without the pile, but I'm also both relieved and dismayed. It'll take me a little bit to get accustomed to the new layout of things. It's been unorganized for the good part of 2012, and changing it up is getting me out of my literal comfort zone. I officially consider this a New Year's Resolution fulfilled. There's another thing I don't have to worry about!

Metacognition: Under Pressure

It is 11:27PM as I am writing this. I officially have 32 minutes to finish this thing. Know what led me to this? That magical fifteen-letter word: procrastination. 

I've been a procrastinator since...well, forever. If I have an enormous project due on Monday? Sunday night is the night for me!If twenty-five percent of my science grade is riding on this one paper that's due three weeks from now? I have three weeks! Time to draw and write and build things! If my test score depends on me reading "King Lear" for English class tonight? Eh, I'll do it tomorrow morning. I am genuinely every teacher's worst nightmare. I have put off every single assignment I got this year until the last minute. Every "A" was a last minute adventure, every "B" was a pressed-for-time project, and every "C" or lower grade was an late night escapade in my mind. Teachers (rightfully so) encourage their students to plan their time wisely, and do their homework when they can so they don't have to worry about it later. This has never worked for me.

Anyone that knows me understands that I work the best under a large amount of stress. By large amount of stress, I do not mean staying up until three in the morning, getting by on chocolate and caffeine, and pushing all my homework until the last minute; by stress I mean the adrenaline rush I get from the due date being at such close proximity. This may sound strange, unhealthy, and completely unnatural, but these minutes two hours before the due date of an extremely large project produce some of my best work. 

I don't know what it is about waiting until the last minute that makes me work so well. My mind actually refuses to get down and dirty until about three hours before I know I either go to bed or go to school. This paper here? Yeah, I tried writing this about four hours ago. I couldn't even write my name, much less a well-formed paper. I can't focus until I know that I absolutely have to stop reading, or watching "Monty Python", or drawing squiggles all over my Spanish notebook. Even then sometimes, my mind just grinds to a halt and gathers cobwebs until it realizes, "Hey Emily! You've got an enormous project due in...seven hours? We can get started now! Nap time is over!" Generally, I work very efficiently during this time. I have no problem communicating my voice or my opinion to my target audience, my math concepts always make sense, and I can always find some sort of ridiculous pun in whatever I'm reading at the moment. It's during the day where I can't even tell people my favorite color.

I don't mean to say that this method has always paid off. Sometimes, I feel that the picture below accurately describes my existence.

Especially this year my brand of procrastination has been failing me. It's not that I don't work well under pressured circumstances any more, it's just that these pressured circumstances have become almost too pressured. Every teacher likes to think that their class is the most important in their students' lives. My Chem teacher loves to give us labs because she expects that we all have three hours every other day to pre-lab, analyze data, and make charts. Similarly, my math teacher loves to give out daily math homework because he feels that we should have an extra hour to do that. Add Academy homework, health work, and extracurriculars, and you have an exhausted, overwhelmed, stressed-out kid. I have felt nothing but stressed all year long and my homework habits have done nothing to help me. I feel slow and sluggish and generally out of it in every class I attend not because I'm disinterested, but because I am utterly overwhelmed by the amount of thinking, work, and comprehension demanded by every teacher. The only way I have managed to get by without having a breakdown is Stage Crew. 

My thinking processes have stayed the same, I realize. I process things the same way, my views are very similar to what they were at the beginning of the year, and I generally write and analyze in a specific fashion. I just now realize that the way I execute my thinking, particularly in homework, needs a total makeover. 

((ONE MINUTE LEFT!))