failing like never before

What I did this weekend:

• procrastinated
• cooked enough food to last me to the middle of the week
• ate all the food I cooked (I was hungry)
• tried to sleep in but failed miserably (I ended up waking up at 7:50am)
• rode my bike 25 miles, stopped and stared at the houses in Brentwood that probably cost more money then I'll ever make in ten lifetimes
• procrastinated by looking at various electronic gadgets on-line that I have no need for and couldn't possibly afford
• tried to work on my lab but was distracted by food
• sat in the computer lab for about three hours, wrote two lines of code, and tried unsuccessfully to help someone with his Linux troubles
• procrastinated by doing laundry and then sewing up the holes in my black jeans (there were a lot more holes the I realized)
• tried to study but somehow ended up watching old Justice League Unlimited episodes on youtube
• finally got my butt in gear around 7pm on Sunday night and hit the library

On another note, I added a basic captcha to the comment box on this blog in order to reduce the amount of spam Akismet had to handle (Akismet is great, but it does occasionally mark stuff incorrectly). Amazingly enough, a few spam bots are making their way past my captchas! Modern image processing is impressive stuff...

When I created this blog, I gave it the sub-heading "failing like never before," although at the time I had no idea how apt the name would become. You see, I recently come to realize while reflecting on my life, that my intellectual capacity and mental abilities peaked at around the beginning of eighth grade, and that since then I've been on a steady and slow decline. Every day of my life is, in short, more of a failure then the day that preceded it.Therefore, I am indeed failing like never before.

My grades in college have been lackluster and far from impressive, my transcript is peppered with Cs and there is a noticeable dearth of strong achievements on my resume. Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was a bright and attentive student who was always "on top of the ball." But now I have trouble focusing in class and cannot seem to bring myself to care as much about studying as I once did.

So my university has a policy that students in the school of engineering cannot drop a class after the Friday of the fourth week of the quarter. But a few weeks ago, just a day after the drop deadline for classes had passed, I suddenly realized that I was in some pretty deep trouble. As a result of my procrastination and difficulties in focusing on studying, I was severely behind in my circuits class and my midterm was just a few days away. Meanwhile, I still had a lot of work to do on my A.I. homework. Long story short, I couldn't drop my circuits class so I ended up flunking the midterm (although I did finish my A.I. homework and did a pretty good job on it). No matter how badly I've ever done a test in high school or college, I've never failed a test before, at least up until now. I was so depressed, that after the midterm, instead of riding my bike home I ended up riding for over an hour in a straight line away from campus; I think a part of me just wanted to run away from my problems.

There was a time when I could have banged out a seven page paper in a few hours, assuming that I knew enough about the subject matter. But a few weeks ago, I ended up staying up until four in the morning writing a seven page paper on air pollution. FOUR IN THE MORNING!!! And it wasn't even a well written paper at that. The worst part, was that I then proceeded to sleep through my class (which was from 9-12) and ended up turning my paper in late. When I was in high school, I woke up at 6:30 sharp everyday, regardless of what time I had gone to sleep or what day of the week it was. And up until this year of college, I had never turned in a late paper.

More on the failures of my life to come later...