Post by Sam on Jan 20, 2020 23:54:20 GMT
Today's long post brought to you by: procrastination!!!
I recently started college after not being in school for about a year and a half (incidentally about the amount of time that I've consciously acknowledged that I have MD) and when I was turning in an assignment today I came across a thought that was relevant to talk about here.
I've always been a good student. Part of its just my personality and desire to learn but a lot of its my perfectionism. I am a horrible perfectionist and it was only made worse after I was designated a "gifted kid" when I was 12 (the whole gifted kid thing is another can of worms and I can talk about how harmful it is for days, but that's not the point of this thread). I don't think I've ever gotten a B in my life.
I've been working for a few years to overcome my perfectionism, but its not, well, perfect. Take today for example: I had to respond to a discussion prompt.
The prompt was pretty vague (the bane of my perfectionistic existence) and its early in the week so few people have posted their responses (so I don't have much to base mine off of). I wrote up a long response to a critical thinking question that I came up with (Why do we daydream and why is daydreaming important?). I spent probably an hour typing it up and then carefully looking back at the prompt to make sure that I'd understood it properly and had responded to the best of my ability.
Once I posted my response, I was consumed by thoughts like "oh my god I picked a question that has a concrete answer", "what if I was supposed to respond critically to the question I picked by asking more questions, instead of actually answering the question", "I did horrible I'm going to fail." You know, your normal perfectionistic thinking patterns.
But because of how in tune I am now with my urges to daydream, I was able to recognize the tension and desire to run away from those thoughts. And I remember back when I was in high school, I was unconsciously getting up to daydream every few minutes. Knowing what I know now, I think that those short but frequent daydreaming episodes were my way of avoiding the uncomfortable emotions that come with my perfectionistic thinking patterns.
I think that this is an important discovery for me because it will hopefully give me the ability to chose not to run away from my perfectionism. And if I don't run away, I'm much better able to employ other coping methods for dealing with the perfectionism.
Oh, and the perfectionism that I'm feeling toward the discussion thing is doubly ridiculous because it looks like we're graded off of participation/word count (like we get full credit if our responses are over 30 words or something), not quality of content. Brains suck.
I recently started college after not being in school for about a year and a half (incidentally about the amount of time that I've consciously acknowledged that I have MD) and when I was turning in an assignment today I came across a thought that was relevant to talk about here.
I've always been a good student. Part of its just my personality and desire to learn but a lot of its my perfectionism. I am a horrible perfectionist and it was only made worse after I was designated a "gifted kid" when I was 12 (the whole gifted kid thing is another can of worms and I can talk about how harmful it is for days, but that's not the point of this thread). I don't think I've ever gotten a B in my life.
I've been working for a few years to overcome my perfectionism, but its not, well, perfect. Take today for example: I had to respond to a discussion prompt.
The prompt was pretty vague (the bane of my perfectionistic existence) and its early in the week so few people have posted their responses (so I don't have much to base mine off of). I wrote up a long response to a critical thinking question that I came up with (Why do we daydream and why is daydreaming important?). I spent probably an hour typing it up and then carefully looking back at the prompt to make sure that I'd understood it properly and had responded to the best of my ability.
Once I posted my response, I was consumed by thoughts like "oh my god I picked a question that has a concrete answer", "what if I was supposed to respond critically to the question I picked by asking more questions, instead of actually answering the question", "I did horrible I'm going to fail." You know, your normal perfectionistic thinking patterns.
But because of how in tune I am now with my urges to daydream, I was able to recognize the tension and desire to run away from those thoughts. And I remember back when I was in high school, I was unconsciously getting up to daydream every few minutes. Knowing what I know now, I think that those short but frequent daydreaming episodes were my way of avoiding the uncomfortable emotions that come with my perfectionistic thinking patterns.
I think that this is an important discovery for me because it will hopefully give me the ability to chose not to run away from my perfectionism. And if I don't run away, I'm much better able to employ other coping methods for dealing with the perfectionism.
Oh, and the perfectionism that I'm feeling toward the discussion thing is doubly ridiculous because it looks like we're graded off of participation/word count (like we get full credit if our responses are over 30 words or something), not quality of content. Brains suck.
