AHHHHHHHHH!

Guess what?!?!? It’s almost November 1! And guess what else?!?!? I still have 5 college essays to finish writing and revising before then! :’)

Honestly though, if past me found out that future me was in this predicament, I wouldn’t have been surprised. I’ve been a procrastinator for as long as I could remember. Over the past few years, I’ve discovered that I’m a procrastinator by perfectionism. I’ve tried to overcome that, but it’s so deeply rooted in me that even when I do manage to rip some of it out temporarily, it grows back as vigorously as ever.

I usually don’t think of myself as a perfectionist. I don’t have enough energy or willpower to try to make sure everything I do is perfect. I want for everything to be amazing, but getting myself to actually work on things is another story. There are some things like craft projects where I can’t stop myself from working on it and making sure it’s exactly how I want it without settling for less. For everything else, though, once I start working on it and it’s not going that well, I immediately want to stop. Maybe I’m a lazy perfectionist, if that’s a thing.

But, a lazy procrastinating perfectionist… Yeah, that sounds like a horrible combination. But, I’ve been those three things all at once today already. I was lazy. I came home from school and fell asleep instead of doing my homework and college work, and when I woke up I just talked to my boyfriend, listened to music, and freaked out over college applications instead of embracing the college work. It’s 11:49PM right now, and I’m still procrastinating working on my college essays by writing this-- I’m doing this so I don’t have to let myself believe that my college essays are very trashy or unwritten right now. Once I believe that, I think that’s when my perfectionism kicks in. I’ll write and edit one sentence over and over, and later I’ll freak out when I have so little work to show for all the time I’ve spent.

Usually for other writing assignments I will allow myself to leave the sentence and continue writing. These college essays are different though. I’m feel like I’m freezing up when writing them because they’re so high-stakes. For someone who doesn’t have the best test scores-- my essays might be the deal breaker. I want to convey my personality, I want to answer the prompt in an engineer type way, and I want it to be interesting. But, I keep driving into this ditch by trying to write so that whoever is reading my essay will like me. I also feel like I’m almost putting the college on a pedestal. I’m not sure why either of those things are happening. I don’t remember a time where that’s happened before, but hopefully once I get into a writing groove I can be more genuine.

It’s getting close to 12:30AM now, so I’d better get cracking. I hope a lazy procrastinating perfectionist can also be efficient.

Theatre

Last week were the performances for the fall play I was in, Arsenic and Old Lace. For all of you that came to see it, I hope you enjoyed it :)

It’s always sad once a show ends. Going from rehearsing 2-5 hours a day to nothing is really jarring. That’s partly because I have so much more time on my hands now. It makes my evenings feel abnormally long. But, it’s mostly because I’m not going to see my cast mates every day when I’ve seen them almost every day for the past three months. I run into everyone around school, but it’s not really the same. It’s not all of us together—we’re all dispersed and now the play is just a memory that we all share.

I feel like there is a special type of bonding that only comes from being in the cast and crew of a show. Especially for a small cast, like Arsenic’s. You get to bond over the stress of school during tech week, how crazy some scenes are, the costume choices. During tech week, everyone is together for 4-7 hours each night. That’s a long time to be around the same people. You get to know each person better than you did before. There is a sense of teamwork, trying to put on the best performance possible. The number of inside jokes grows each day. It’s amazing and it’s one of the reasons I enjoy theatre so much.

This fall play was my last. I feel a little heartbroken even thinking about it. When everyone started hugging me before the last performance, it really hit me that I wouldn’t be doing this again next year. Uni theatre has been a big part of my life ever since I’ve started here. I’ve been in almost every show since my subbie year. Although I’ll still have lots of other theatre experiences between Stud Prod and the musical, the fall play has always been my favorite. I’m not a hug fan of singing—mostly because I’m not good at it— which makes the musicals a little less enjoyable for me. They’re still really fun, but I don’t really get to act as much as I do in the fall plays. Studprod is still tremendously fun, but the rehearsal process is so much shorter and there are so many small casts that you don’t really get to mingle with everyone. The fall plays have been the perfect mixture of acting and mingling for me. Acting has made me happy for these past 5 years. I'm not sure that I could imagine what high school would've have been like if I didn't have Uni theatre.