They don’t call it dead week for no reason… This week has definitely been the hardest one of the entire term. The stress of all the work I have to get done has been overwhelming. Luckily, since I only have projects and papers instead of final tests, I get to go home this Sunday. However, as happy as I am to be heading home to California to see my family, this is also what has been distracting me from my school work the most this week. I have to finish two projects, write a paper and pack up my entire apartment by sunday. I think I see an all-nighter in my future. In addition to all of the tasks I need to accomplish, I want to make time to see my friends one last time before we all take off for two months. Trying to balance all of this has proved extremely difficult. I will be in the middle of working on one task, but won’t be able to focus because I’m too busy thinking about one of the other ones I have yet to accomplish. Also in the back of my mind this entire week is that I have an 89 percent in literally every one of my classes. This adds to the stress and distraction because I not only want to get my work done early, but I also NEED to do it well (which is really hard considering everything that I’ve already complained about). Dead week has definitely gotten the best of me, but I just keep telling myself, “only three more days. You can do it.”

I think we can all agree that cell phones are probably some of the most dominant forms of distractions, especially for young people. We waste so much of our time checking and posting on social media when we could actually be doing something productive. Cell phones often take us away from what we should really be doing. I lost my phone last night… And and even though I haven’t been able to use the abundance of distracting apps on it, my phone is still my biggest distraction. I can not focus on anything because I’m so preoccupied with worrying about where my phone is and trying to find it. Sitting in class, I couldn’t listen to the professor because I was busy retracing my steps of the night before. I always have my phone in my hand or in my pocket and while retracing my steps I still couldn’t seem to figure out when or where I would have lost it. I also had a test in my spanish class this morning and I couldn’t even focus on that because of how distracted I was about my phone. It’s been a long day to say the least, and although I have a lot of work to do, I don’t think I’ll be able to get any of it done until I know what happened to my phone.

It has been a busy and stressful week to say the least. After spending four days away at Shasta Lake with a large group of students and friends, I’ve had to catch up on my schoolwork that I didn’t get done over the weekend. I have had an oral presentation to give, a midterm paper to write, and an abundance of pages to read. On top of that, I now have a fever and a soar throat. Having too much fun while away with friends this weekend must have finally caught up to me. Being sick in college is hard. All I want is to stay in bed, watch movies and have my mom come take care of me. Unfortunately for me, my mom is eight hundred miles away in California and I have class to go to and homework to do. I think the biggest distraction for me when I am sick is definitely my bed. No matter how hard I try to stay focused on whatever I need to get done, all I can think about is sleep. This was especially a huge problem for me while trying to write my midterm paper for this class. I probably took about fifty breaks just to close my eyes for a few seconds. It also didn’t help that I was writing it on my couch while wrapped in a comfortable blanket and eating warm soup. I just could not keep myself awake and focused. Thankfully, my fever has gone down a little bit and I can finally swallow solid food again.

Talk about getting distracted… I got my weeks mixed up and forgot that I had a blog post due on Friday instead of a comment due on Monday. By the time I realized this it was monday morning in spanish class. I didn’t have time in between classes to go home and write so basically I was just sitting there in class thinking, “great, I’m screwed.”
Last week was a busy one for me. I had a lot to get done before the end of the week because I had to go to Seattle, Washington for a work training weekend for my summer job. I work for United Cheerleaders Association (UCA) as a summer cheer camp instructor. We had to have a number of dances memorized by the time we got there, so learning the material on top of trying to get all of my homework done before I left was definitely a distraction. Although I thought that I had gotten everything that I needed to done, I obviously should have double checked my planner before I took off for the weekend. I left class early on Friday afternoon, drove four and a half hours each way, and didn’t get back until Sunday at midnight.
By this point I was exhausted from a weekend of dancing, stunting, and training. As soon as I finally got home, I went straight to bed with out worrying about what work I had missed or had left to do. Bad idea.

I was sitting in my journalism class yesterday listening to my professor give a lecture about our upcoming project. This project is a large percentage of our grade so I knew I better give my undivided attention. I had my notebook open for taking notes in order to make sure I did not miss any important information about certain aspect of the project. I was being productive and writing bullet points down when, all of a sudden, I found myself doodling in the margins of the pages in my notebook.
By the end of the class, my “notes” were covered with little flowers, stars, and cursive words. I thought, “Shoot, I did it again. What did the professor just say?” I catch myself drawing all over my papers quite often. It seems like I can’t have a piece of paper and a pencil in front of me with out doodling pictures around whatever notes I am writing at the time. Even when I tried extremely hard to pay attention to the instructions to our project, I couldn’t keep my hand still. While taking notes is a necessity for most classes, and as much as I attempt to keep my mind focused in class, taking notes is sometimes how I get distracted. Luckily, I was able to jot down most of the significant points of the project, but I was still left with several questions at the end of the class.

I came home from class this morning and went straight to the couch to relax before I had to leave again for practice. I turn the TV. I begin watching reruns of “America’s Next Top Model.” I am about half way through an episode when my roommate comes into the living room and joins me on the couch. She begins to tell me a story about something that had happened to her the night before. I am intrigued because she has an extremely funny and outgoing personality and she always has new and interesting stories to share with the household. She was almost at the end of her story when I I catch myself being distracted by the show that is on the TV in the background. I had missed several details of her dramatic story and had to ask her to start over.
I can tell that she is somewhat annoyed that I had not been paying my full attention to her story. Therefore, I try my best to focus only on her words this time. However, the noise of the television pulls me away form her story once again. I did not want to be rude and ask her to start her story a third time again, so I just sit quietly and nod my head as she continues to talk. I laugh along with her to make is seem as though I am actually listening. In my opinion, TV is one of the most distracting form of media.

I was sitting in Spanish class yesterday morning learning about the grammar of perfect tense. As much as I tried to focus on the lesson being given by my enthusiastic professor, the spectacle outside of a nearby window continued to grab my attention. I couldn’t help but notice how, although the sun was shining when I had first arrived to class, it was now raining heavily. As I stared out the window at students running for cover from the swiftly changing weather of the morning, I was reminded of my first visit to the University of Oregon two years ago.
Although I had been warned several times by friends and family about the sometimes unfavorable weather of Oregon, I remember feeling hopeful and excited about what this school had to offer me. My mom and I, after arriving to Eugene, decided to walk from our hotel to campus because it was a decent and mostly sunny day. By the time we reached only a few blocks from campus, however, we were stuck hiding under the awning of a bus stop from a rainstorm that was nonexistent less than ten minutes ago.
Giggling to myself as I reminisced on this moment, I suddenly realized that it was nearing the end of class and I still had no idea how to arrange a Spanish written sentence in perfect tense. The distraction of the world occurring outside of my Spanish classroom hindered my gaining of significant knowledge needed for my class.

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