Meghan Weaver Distraction Blogs

My finals week consists of three big finals Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then the final paper for this class due Thursday.  Needless to say, my life for the past week and the week to come have been and are going to be extremely stressful.  I’ve been waking up at 6 almost every morning to try and study, do homework, and just get my life together as a whole.  I’ve been attempting to lock myself in the library, but its become more challenging to get out the door when all my friends are off doing more desirable things.  Most of them don’t have finals, only have projects, or don’t have a lot of studying to do overall.

I get distracted because I know that if I don’t take breaks I will run myself into the ground, but these breaks have turned out to be longer than desired.  I also don’t want to miss out on anything and want to partake in all these fun activities.  However, I chose a more challenging major and need to come to terms with the fact that I’m not going to get to do everything and I can’t keep putting things off because I will come to regret it later.

Since I realized that I’m allowing myself to become too distracted during crunch time, I’ve outlined the rest of the term.  The outline is a list of different tasks, subjects, or parts of my studies that I want to get done each day.  While I still will wake up early and get the bulk of it done, I’m going to force myself to complete them before I commit to an adventure or go hang out with friends because I know I won’t be productive when I’m tired right before I go to bed.

Every since daylight savings it has been getting dark too early for my liking.  I’ve come to realize that if I’m not in the library before it gets dark, then I have zero motivation to go.  Once the sun goes down my internal clock tells me that I need to be in my house and I become overwhelmed with exhaustion.  I always tell myself that I will go home and do homework or study on my  couch, but with the distraction of my roommates and my desire to hear about their days makes productive work difficult.  I wish that I was capable of being productive after the sun goes down, but I still struggle daily.

I think the reason I don’t deal with the lack of light well during this time of year is because I’m from a sunny area.  In Los Angeles it is sunny almost all year round and I only need to wear a sweatshirt when it gets cold.  In addition, the lack of sun has made me quite pale, which sounds like a silly thing to let bother me, but it does.  I can tan extremely easily and seeing myself so plane is something I don’t think I will ever get used to.  I could go tanning,  but I feel like I’ve done enough damage to my skin throughout the years, that a tanning bed is a terrible idea and I’m scared I’ll turn orange from a spray tan.  I experience these thoughts yearly, but for some reason how early it gets dark is bothering me way more than it ever has.  I need to stop letting all these little details get to me and find the motivation to brace the cold and get to the library.  Once I’m there and I can’t see out a window, I will be fine, but its the actual act of walking the five blocks to get there.  I should just suck it up and do it so I don’t sink into a weather depression during winter.

This week my entire family came into town for the USC game.  Since I grew up in LA, my entire family are SC fans. It’s my senior year and they’ve never come to visit me before so I’ve been really excited for the past few weeks.  I pictured everything running smoothly, but since I’m still in school it has become more of a challenge than I had expected.  I ended up getting food poisoning last night and decided I would wake up at 5:30 in order to do homework.  I was being exteremly productive until my grandma called at 8 and said she wanted a tour of the school. Since it was my grandparents and they’d never been here before, I felt obligated to show them the school.  The rest of the family had made plans for the day starting at 12 and my grandparents completely distracted me from being productive.

Throughout today I have viewed this distraction as a negative because it held me back from my school work that has been stressing me out.  I spent the first part of the day bothered by the stress of classes that I was unable to enjoy the time I was spending with family.  Half way through the day I came to the realization that I couldn’t change the fact that I became distracted and didn’t get as much done as I had hoped. I could not change the past and I was done allowing it to disrupt the time I was spending with my family.  While distractions normally are avoidable, this one was not and I just needed to be okay with it.

After the first part of my midterm today I came home to catch up on a few of my shows to take a mental break.  As I was watching Grey’s Anatomy I caught myself looking at my social medias on my phone in the middle of the episode.  I realized that I was watching Grey’s, but not actually watching.  The show was no longer grabbing my full attention.  Then I became a little disappointed in myself because I checked my social medias during the show rather than during a commercial.  Now I was going to have to sit and be bored through the commercials and I brought it on myself.

At first I took a step back and made a solid effort to give the tv show all of my attention.  I figured if I practiced this often I could work on extending my attention span and be less susceptible to distractions.  I wanted to make a solid conscious effort to try and control my brain more in informal moments like watching tv so that it would be easier to avoid distractions when studying or doing homework.  In addition, I would allow myself to pick up my phone on commercials, which made me plan when I would allow myself to get distracted.  I think this would be a useful tool when studying.  It would force me to take small timed breaks while studying, which I often normally avoid.  I think I avoid study breaks normally because I am bad about bringing myself back to my studies and a five minute break turns into twenty.  I think trying this new strategy would make my studying more productive.  I have the second part of midterm on Monday, so this weekend will be full of studying.  I’ll test out this new strategy and see how it works out.  Also, side note, can it even be considered a midterm if they’re week 7 and 8?  I also have one week 9.  I’ve been having one to two midterms every week since week 3 and I’m over it.  And just right there I got distracted from this blog with a rant about school.  I probably shouldn’t let my mind linger on frustrating topics for my own sanity in this sleepless, delirious time.

After three weeks of endless midterms, sleep has been difficult to come by. I’ve been telling myself all week that I wanted to clean my room and really get on top of all of my schoolwork, but I’ve been extremely exhausted.   I found my desire to sleep distracted me from the goals I had set this past week.  Instead of doing homework at night I would allow myself to relax and sleep.  However, this earlier bed time meant I would wake up at 6 or 7 every morning to do the homework I had put off the previous night.  I don’t know if this was overall helping me catch up on missed sleep or just giving my brain an emotionally break before I threw myself back into my responsibilities.

This distraction of wanting to sleep has led me to discover that I am ten times more productive in the morning when no one is awake.  This increase in productivity could also come from the fact that none of my roommates are up that early and they may distract me more than I think they do.  Early mornings are a peaceful time where I can curl up in a blanket on my couch and actually focus on the tasks in front of me.  It eliminates the possibility of the distraction of roommates, as well as texts, social media updates, and tv.  The only distraction I do occasionally experience in hunger, but that usually comes an hour or so into my work, which I don’t mind.  It also forces me to eat breakfast, which I am normally not great at.  I’ve never been a morning person and I wouldn’t say I’m completely a fan yet, but when I need to get things done, mornings are an easier time to eliminate a majority of the distractions I experience on a daily basis.

After being without a phone for four weeks, my new one finally came in on Tuesday.  While it was super exciting that I was able to easily communicate with my fiends and family, it instantly became a huge distraction.  I had a midterm on Thursday and needed to study, but setting up my phone and getting up to date on everything I’d missed got in the way.  Before I knew it, I had let my phone consume two hours of my day.  After realizing this I came to the conclusion that I was not going to allow myself to get distracted by my phone as easily as I used to.  That two hours of occupation was way too long and I was not going to let it happen again.

Since Tuesday I have done very well of not being extremely dependent on my phone.  I went the entire week without texting in my classes and the number of times I check my social media per day has drastically decreased than how it used to be.  In addition, I was also able to block it out almost all together when I was studying the morning of my test.  I only picked up my phone twice to respond to texts and I did that at stopping points in my studies rather than the second they appeared on my screen.  I think being more aware of when I get distracted and being able to take a step back and realize how much I allow them to control my actions has made them easier to shut out.  While I still need to limit the amount of time I check things when I wake up, overall I think I have made major improvements in not being consumed by my phone.

Week four means midterms.  This week was a long, carried out Anatomy midterm that consisted of three separate parts starting on Monday and ending on Friday.   By the time Thursday night rolled around I was mentally exhausted and studying was proving to be a mission and a half.  It all started out well, I was curled up in a ball on the couch and being productive until  one of my roommates brought up ice cream.  I needed it and could no longer focus on anything but how badly I wanted ice cream and french fries.   I called my boyfriend and we went to McDonald’s and got ice cream, french fries, and breakfast.   It was everything I thought I needed, but then once we got back, I still couldn’t focus on studying.  I was checked out for the night.  I then made a study plan that involved avoiding studying last night and waking up at 5am this morning to cover the rest of the material before the test.

I think I was so easily thrown off my studies because for the past week and a half that is all I’ve been doing and my social life was pretty much reduced to nothing.  I knew I would get a few days break before I needed to crack down for my Physiology midterm next Thursday and I couldn’t wait.  It was so easy to just hang out and watch movies with my boyfriend and roommates that I couldn’t resist.  It could have also been the fact that I was extremely over my routine of constantly studying the same subject.  While I do find anatomy to be fascinating, I was mentally exhausted and willing to be distracted by anything so I could have a break.  While this distraction did turn into a nice relaxing night, waking up this morning took a lot of willpower, and today has been a long one.

This week has been so incredibly busy that I have been able to eliminate most distractions I encounter on a daily basis.  I also still don’t have a phone due to multiple miscommunications between myself and Best Buy, so that helps me stay focused (going on week 3 of being phoneless).  Since I have two anatomy midterms next week my life has consisted of running back and forth between class, the library, the cadaver lab, and occasionally home to eat.  However, I do take a mindful brain seminar once a week where we practice mindfulness through different forms of meditation, while also studying the brain.

During one of the meditations we are supposed to allow ourselves to relax and attempt to clear our minds while also watching where our thoughts wonder.  The point of the exercise to be aware of where our thoughts are and to let them flow in and out without focusing on them.  During this exercise I realized how dry my left eye felt.  It was distraction me from partaking in the practice and there was nothing I could do about it.  I began focusing on it and realizing it was distracting me, which lead me to thinking about this class.  Distractions cannot be eliminated.  As I sat there trying to free myself of all the distractions and chaos of my everyday life, I was still distracted by something as simple as a feeling in my eye.  I would not even have been aware of this feeling in my eye if I didn’t try to completely ease my mind, yet here it was.  It ended up working out though because I used the discomfort in my eye as an anchor and continued on in trying to relax.

As I left the seminar, I began to think that this weekly session was somewhat of a distraction from my everyday life.  It was where I could relax and calm myself.  It was an hour a day that I felt in most control of my brain.  I do attempt informal meditations while walking home from classes to bring ease to myself, but I feel like I should make a stronger attempt to do small formal practices more frequently.  Being aware of distractions has made me realize that the distraction and sense of calmness mindfulness brings to me is beneficial to my everyday life.  While I do think distractions are unavoidable, I do not think all distractions are bad.

At the beginning of this week my phone broke.  I was staying at my boyfriends house and when I woke up and realized I had forgotten to plug it in before I went to bed so it only had 2%.  Instead of getting out of bed to plug it in, I got distracted and checked Instagram instead (my normal morning routine).  Naturally my phone died, so when I got home the first thing I did was plug it in.  I remember having to go to the bathroom really bad, but plugging my phone in took top priority.  Looking back I find it humorous that I am so dependent on my phone.  I needed to plug it in first so that it could turn on quicker and I could have my distraction back quicker.  I didn’t get to finish checking all my social medias before it died, so I was feeling out of the loop.  My phone ended up being stuck on the white about to turn on screen for two hours, refusing to turn on completely.  It was like a tease, looking like it was so close to turning back on, but knowing it never was.  My phone was toast.  I was also right in the middle of sorority recruitment, so I literally had no free time to run to best buy to use my warranty to get a new phone.  That and I haven’t minded being phoneless, so I wasn’t making the biggest effort to go figure it out.  I have been phoneless for a week now and I think  that after I finish this post it will be time to finally head to best buy and join society again.

This past week has been extremely difficult to communicate with people, but it has been really nice as well.  The sad part was I was more upset that I would be losing the fire emojis on snapchat than actually not having a way to get ahold of people for simple, daily questions.  Thinking about it now, that is one of the biggest first-world problems I’ve ever heard and I should re-evaluate my priorities.  Now that my main distraction was not at my finger tips anymore, it felt nice not to rely on it.  However, when it came time to do homework, I would find myself looking for a distraction because getting distracted has become a habit I just do without thinking about.  I’ve realized that my attention span has become quite short because of how often I give into distractions.  I would find myself  with two assignments in front of me and every 30 minutes or so I would think to myself “wow I’ve been at this for a while, what can I go to take my mind off this for two minutes?”  I would then play with my cat, run  random scenarios through my head, read articles online that I normally would scroll right past, and I even allowed a bug on the wall to distract me.  I actually sat there and watched it for a few minutes before I told myself I needed to put the bug outside and get back to focusing.  I was literally looking for things to distract me, its like I was going though phone withdrawals.

Luckily, as the week continued, my desire for having such frequent distractions faded.  I still do look for distractions, just not at the rate that I did the day after my phone broke.  I think when I go get my phone I want to try and not be so dependent on it.  A life without distractions always at my fingertips has been peaceful, more productive, and my attention span has increased significantly.

Calculus. 50 minutes of copying notes strait off the chalkboard. I’ve taken the class before, so I sit and listen to the GTF throw endless amounts of jumbled information at us and wonder how anyone possibly has time to actually grasp what is being taught. I can’t help but think about how grateful I am to already know what is happening because I know if I didn’t I would be entirely lost and need to put in copious amounts of hours with tutors. I want to be paying attention because I want to succeed in this class, but listening to his lectures makes all the information I do know seem foreign. Maybe it’s the fact that I can barely decipher the GTF’s handwriting or the fact that a lecture style class environment has never held my attention well. I notice myself accepting defeat and tell myself that I will have to go to TLC tutoring in order to bridge the gaps in my understanding of what exactly he is expecting out of us week 1. Once I have made this decision in my head my hand seems as if it is on autopilot and my brain begins to wonder.

At fist I start thinking about my schedule and all the other tasks I need to accomplish that day. I make mental notes about when I plan to do my Anatomy and Physiology homework. Then I go off on a rant thinking about how much I enjoy those classes. The active teaching style makes the classes sail right by.

I check the time on my phone. Only 20 minutes have passed and I still have 30 minutes to go. I get disappointed in myself because I checked out and accepted defeat way earlier than I normally would.

Now I’m checking Instagram and Facebook in between writing down different examples in my notebook. Everyone looks like they’re out enjoying their first week of school. I have a strong desire to join, but know that I have way too much to do school related and that I will be spending most of my night in the library.   I’ve now exhausted my social medias and try to focus again.

The GTF is now trying to explain definite integrals, but I notice that he’s skipping over a vital step that he hasn’t taught the class yet. I look around and the entire class looks extremely puzzled. Five minutes later he explains the missing step and I watch as light bulbs go off in other students’ heads.

Buzz Buzz. Someone has texted me. I check it immediately because my lack of interest allows me to accept any excuse to not fully pay attention.   I check the time as I unlock my phone. 10 more minutes left, I can do this. I engage myself in this texting conversation between writing down different rules about how to manipulate definite integrals.

The class gets out early and a sense of relief washes over me. I walk out of the building with another girl in my class. She seemed to have similar issues about focusing specifically in this calc class. We make plans to study together sometime over the weekend and I head off to the library to give my best attempt at focusing in a different subject.