Apathetic Frustration

Bah! Stupid study! I have my first exam tomorrow, and I really have no desire to study for that subject. To tell the truth, I’m not particularly concerned if I even fail it, let alone do poorly in it. Dynamical Systems – linear dynamics and chaos theory, sounds interesting, well, it did at the time I chose to take it. Yet now I cringe at the thought of doing any of it. So what went wrong?

Well, it might have something to do with the fact that I don’t really understand it, having only been to half of the lectures due to a lecture clash. But that shouldn’t have been a problem, and it wasn’t for the first couple of weeks at least, when I caught up with notes and studied it in the library. But then apathy set in, I missed a couple of weeks, and fell behind – bad idea! Especially for me, who, even if most of it is reasonably understandable given some initial information missing, will not allow ideas and concepts to settle in my mind until I have the proper foundations. And so I missed out on learning what was currently being taught whilst I half-heartedly tried and catch up on what I missed beforehand. The really silly thing is though, that had I kept up to date in it, I probably would have enjoyed it and done quite well in it.

I guess, despite my major in maths, it isn’t terribly important, since I can afford to fail it and still get my degree. Or am I simply justifying my apathetic stance? Besides, what kind of lame attitude is that to have? Actually, its pretty much my current life attitude at the moment. For so many things, I’ve cruised through on my own abilities, settling for mediocre results when I could have achieved excellence. And I feel guilty too, for exploiting what God has gifted me with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to make excuses for my downfallings; I’m not trying to say, “I really am so wonderful, I just haven’t tried yet”. It’s more like, “I have everything I don’t deserve, and I’ve been wasting all of it.” At the same time, I don’t want to have a poor-little-me stance, I realise that I need to change my ways, and if it means being hard on myself, so be it.

Trouble is, I tend to conveniently “forget” times when I’ve faced reality, in preference to the comfortable attitude of ignorance. Maybe writing it here is my way of “immortalising” my current opinion, so I can’t deny it at some later stage; maybe it’s so I can have some degree of accountability for my flawed mindset. Or maybe I’m still procrastinating study.

Argh! I frustrate myself sometimes with the consistent bad decisions I make, or rather, the non-decisions I make! Nice one Matthew, your timing for consideration is indeed impeccable! Right, rant over, must study, or at least try to study!