Novel Deadlines, Time Usage, Erasmus Intentions
I need to do some soul-scrubbing. The old badboy's gotten dirty. By which I mean since my exams have finished self-discipline has fallen drastically. Just because I'm not doing academia, it doesn't mean I don't have a life not to waste. So this post is going to spent soul-scrubbing, fixing myself up, in three parts.
1. Novel deadline.
It's about time I got serious with the novel I'm working on. A part of me has decided that I want to do a postgraduate MA in Creative Writing, and if I want to do that, I need to submit some work as part of the application process. Now, I've just reached the end of the 2nd year of my undergraduate education, which means I've got 2 years left. I'm not entirely sure when MA applications begin, but I suppose it's fair to say that I should have something ready to submit before the second semester of my final year, which means before January 2016. So in fact, I will just make that the deadline to have completed at least a presentable draft of my current project (APMC): January 1st, 2016. This is more than enough time, just over a year, and I'm decently into the protodraft at the moment. If I make January 1st, 2015 the absolute latest deadline for a completed protodraft, I can spend the rest of that year tidying it up to make a presentable draft. So I have two deadlines here:
- 01/01/2015 : complete protodraft of APMC deadline.
- 01/01/2016: complete presentable draft of APMC deadline.
2. Time Usage.
The first part leads me neatly into the second. If I'm serious about completing a novel, I need to 1) dedicate more time to writing, and 2) dedicate more time to reading, to improve my skills. At the moment, in this undisciplined summer, it's fair to say that ~80% of my waking time is spent aimlessly using the internet. This is a travesty. That can't be the majority of my time usage. I need to create a mental paradigm shift in which the internet moves from the Default Thing To Browse to Mostly A Tool For Some Purpose. To this end, I've decided I'll only spend 4 or 5 hours a day on my laptop doing aimless browsing, which out of a 14 hour day comes up to about 35%. This is a good place to start, I'd say, trying to move from addict-level internet-usage to a healthy level. In order not to delay this, I'll start it effective-immediate, i.e. tomorrow. Let's try to make a verbal pie-chart of what ideally my days will consist of instead:
- Reading: ~35% (5 hours)
- Writing: ~10% (1.5 hours)
- Aimless Netting: ~35% (5 hours)
- Other: ~20% (2.5 hours)
That's a vague outline that I don't have to stick to exactly like with my SoE. It's just a guideline, the only crucial one being that Aimless Netting is reduced to 35% or less.
3. Erasmus Intentions.
Finally, for the final stage of my soul-scrubbing, I think it's about time I considered how I'm going navigate being a foreigner in Italy for a year. There seem to me to be three primary areas of self that I'll be working on when I'm out there, that I'll need to juggle and consider which to prioritise and which to be lax about. These are: 1) language learning, 2) sociability/confidence, and 3) academics. They're all thoroughly connected but are in themselves separate. I can focus on (1) through more self-dependent means, going to theatres, watching films, reading Italian literature, and travelling; I can focus on (2) somewhat at the expense of (1) and (3) by trying to meet as many people as possible, Italian and non-Italian alike, using a bit of Italian on the Italians, but also hanging around a lot with non-Italians; or I can focus on (3) by researching my courses contents in English to get knowledgeable in them, but learning to express them in Italian, which naturally would be skirting around (1) and the focus involved in that would take time away from (2).
I think I prize (1) above all else. I don't want to come back to Edinburgh next year with only a get-byable level of Italian; I want to feel confident speaking it, feel confident in saying, "I know Italian". So I think I will hold that in priority. What's more, using a second language as your primary language means your personality is necessarily limited to what you can express, so the confidence I will be developing will be of a different ilk, not the same as I try to develop in English, a whole different breed of confidence. It will be like starting from scratch confidence-wise. I'm sure it will fortify a general, base confidence that is unconnected to linguistics but is connected to how well one can recovery from failure and being taken out of one's comfort-zone, but in social confidence, which is deeply linguistic in my case, I will be starting from 0. So I'll try not to let that be too important to me, lest I get depressed. Sociability will happen as it happens. I think I'll try as hard as I can in academia without detracting from the fact that really I'm trying to learn a language primarily, not just study in a foreign country.
So: allow myself to be solitary, as long as I'm doing things like travelling or attending films/theatre or general things that will improve my Italian. Be sociable enough not to be depressed, but remember that I want to get good at a language, not just be a socialite. Try as hard as I can with academia (because it will matter), but don't spend all my time in the library or anything, because what matters is language development.
1. Novel deadline.
It's about time I got serious with the novel I'm working on. A part of me has decided that I want to do a postgraduate MA in Creative Writing, and if I want to do that, I need to submit some work as part of the application process. Now, I've just reached the end of the 2nd year of my undergraduate education, which means I've got 2 years left. I'm not entirely sure when MA applications begin, but I suppose it's fair to say that I should have something ready to submit before the second semester of my final year, which means before January 2016. So in fact, I will just make that the deadline to have completed at least a presentable draft of my current project (APMC): January 1st, 2016. This is more than enough time, just over a year, and I'm decently into the protodraft at the moment. If I make January 1st, 2015 the absolute latest deadline for a completed protodraft, I can spend the rest of that year tidying it up to make a presentable draft. So I have two deadlines here:
- 01/01/2015 : complete protodraft of APMC deadline.
- 01/01/2016: complete presentable draft of APMC deadline.
2. Time Usage.
The first part leads me neatly into the second. If I'm serious about completing a novel, I need to 1) dedicate more time to writing, and 2) dedicate more time to reading, to improve my skills. At the moment, in this undisciplined summer, it's fair to say that ~80% of my waking time is spent aimlessly using the internet. This is a travesty. That can't be the majority of my time usage. I need to create a mental paradigm shift in which the internet moves from the Default Thing To Browse to Mostly A Tool For Some Purpose. To this end, I've decided I'll only spend 4 or 5 hours a day on my laptop doing aimless browsing, which out of a 14 hour day comes up to about 35%. This is a good place to start, I'd say, trying to move from addict-level internet-usage to a healthy level. In order not to delay this, I'll start it effective-immediate, i.e. tomorrow. Let's try to make a verbal pie-chart of what ideally my days will consist of instead:
- Reading: ~35% (5 hours)
- Writing: ~10% (1.5 hours)
- Aimless Netting: ~35% (5 hours)
- Other: ~20% (2.5 hours)
That's a vague outline that I don't have to stick to exactly like with my SoE. It's just a guideline, the only crucial one being that Aimless Netting is reduced to 35% or less.
3. Erasmus Intentions.
Finally, for the final stage of my soul-scrubbing, I think it's about time I considered how I'm going navigate being a foreigner in Italy for a year. There seem to me to be three primary areas of self that I'll be working on when I'm out there, that I'll need to juggle and consider which to prioritise and which to be lax about. These are: 1) language learning, 2) sociability/confidence, and 3) academics. They're all thoroughly connected but are in themselves separate. I can focus on (1) through more self-dependent means, going to theatres, watching films, reading Italian literature, and travelling; I can focus on (2) somewhat at the expense of (1) and (3) by trying to meet as many people as possible, Italian and non-Italian alike, using a bit of Italian on the Italians, but also hanging around a lot with non-Italians; or I can focus on (3) by researching my courses contents in English to get knowledgeable in them, but learning to express them in Italian, which naturally would be skirting around (1) and the focus involved in that would take time away from (2).
I think I prize (1) above all else. I don't want to come back to Edinburgh next year with only a get-byable level of Italian; I want to feel confident speaking it, feel confident in saying, "I know Italian". So I think I will hold that in priority. What's more, using a second language as your primary language means your personality is necessarily limited to what you can express, so the confidence I will be developing will be of a different ilk, not the same as I try to develop in English, a whole different breed of confidence. It will be like starting from scratch confidence-wise. I'm sure it will fortify a general, base confidence that is unconnected to linguistics but is connected to how well one can recovery from failure and being taken out of one's comfort-zone, but in social confidence, which is deeply linguistic in my case, I will be starting from 0. So I'll try not to let that be too important to me, lest I get depressed. Sociability will happen as it happens. I think I'll try as hard as I can in academia without detracting from the fact that really I'm trying to learn a language primarily, not just study in a foreign country.
So: allow myself to be solitary, as long as I'm doing things like travelling or attending films/theatre or general things that will improve my Italian. Be sociable enough not to be depressed, but remember that I want to get good at a language, not just be a socialite. Try as hard as I can with academia (because it will matter), but don't spend all my time in the library or anything, because what matters is language development.
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