Ok, so after another weekend of leaving an assignment to the last minute I decided to try something new... No, it wasn't more promises of "I'll start earlier next time!" (past experiences have shown that this is exactly opposite to the case) but instead I decided to see how fast I could write 1,500 words on any topic non stop. It was crazy, it was kinda in procrastination of another assignment (but it's ok, I've finished it now and it's due on Thursday :-D)
Will this be structured like an essay? Who knows... but here it is:
Mangroves are pretty awesome things when you think about it. Now I know a lot of residents from the area of Waiuku would disagree vehemently with this statement, but then they are facing the consequences of bad land management decisions from before their time. Before their time means either before they moved to Waiuku or, for the younger residents of Waiuku, before they were born.
They want to chop the mangrove trees down and some of them do, which is highly illegal, and cite reasons such as "the mangroves are smelly and ugly" or "they're choking our streams to death" or "they have forced the native bird life away and are now only home to crabs and snails". These reasons are all true but they are missing one of the main reasons I don't mind mangroves (even though I don't live near any, so my opinion is not nearly as vaild): THEY ARE FUN!
Look at my facebook photo album from the geog 250 field trip for visual proof.
Mangroves are nature's barrier between the land in and the sea. If a big ass storm comes along and creates all these killer waves that thrash the shoreline, if there are mangroves, they are going to take the brunt of the force and damage caused by the storm. If there are no mangroves, the stream/river/whatever banks will be greatly affected by the storm.
Also, the case in Waiuku that does not make me feel particularly sorry for what is now a real problem, is that a hell of a lot of sediment is getting trapped in the streams because of erosion from the land. Why is there erosion? Because some smart cookie decided to chop all the trees down, leaving unstable soil on the slopes of the surrounding catchments that gets eroded away a little bit more every time it rains. There doesn't have to be substantial amounts of rainfall for soil to erode, either, especially if it's bare soil.
Now, the residents of Waiuku are facing a real problem, the mangroves are too great in number, trapping too much sediment and are still on the rapid increase.
But why? There are too many nutrients (surrounding area is contributing all sorts of nutrients from weed spraying, fertiliser and other wonderful chemical sprays that are used on the land) entering the water ways that are ideal for mangrove growth.
So the answer to their woes is to reduce the number of mangroves, but if the people in charge of the surrounding areas don't change their ways, the mangroves are going to come back again and do what they do best: reclaim land.
On a recent field trip, we were told that the complete removal of mangroves from the area is the best thing that could happen to Waiuku. Sure, go for it, just don't complain when all that land that was generously reclaimed by the mangroves disappears in the next storm :p
But in any case, mangroves are still fun. There is some killer mud out there, quite literally. In some places, the mud is deeper than waist level. You wouldn’t really want to get caught in it as the top layer, in parts, is writhing with crabs. There are also oyster beds. But just like anything in moderation, mangrove mud in moderation is fun.
So, I’ve written just over 500 words on mangroves in the space of 14 minutes. This is encouraging. For my next assignment, if I could write at this rate, my essays would be done in no time! Goodbye frantic writing at 1am and later!
Doing all-nighters on assignments can be fun if you’re not hideously tired, bored, headachy or all of the above, which is often the case. I remember back in seventh form, a good friend of mine wrote a guide to doing an all-nighter. It was a brilliant piece of writing and I wish I still had access to it (maybe I should ask the friend…).
One piece of advice I can give for the aspiring all-nighterer is to have a mammoth sleep the night before the all-nighter. If you’re running on 3-5 hours sleep (and aren’t used to it) for the week or at least two days running up to the all-nighter you’ll find it immensely hard to get through the wee hours of the morning. We all know that having too much sleep means you have difficulty sleeping the following night. This is good! You don’t want to sleep during your all-nighter, you want to work. You also want this work to be fairly good work so that you not only just get it finished on time, missing the late penalty, but your marks aren’t too shabby.
More advice on the all-nighter: restrict caffeinated drinks to the daylight hours and drink only water (or maybe apple tea) at night. Otherwise you’ll get jittery and restless and therefore spend more time walking around and going to the toilet than writing and also, you’ll find that after two the energy drinks aren’t as effective. You also don’t want to have a crash, where you come down from the rush/caffeine rush. This will only leave you with a headache and wishing you could be asleep than agonising over the spelling of a term that you don’t really understand or know much about except for that it’s one of the things your essay/report/assignment is supposed to be about.
All-nighters are also best for those who don’t sleep very easily. I know my best all-nighters have been when I’m having an insomniac week and can’t sleep anyway. This way, I’m not even remotely sleepy until 5am. Ooh, that reminds me, set a time when you’re going to go to bed and stick to it. Be it 2am, 4:30am or 6am, make sure you get some sleep before returning to do the final editing and then printing out your assignment. We all know from the driving training (if you’re over 18 and haven’t had it, shame on you! ;p) that 45mins is a short enough nap to make sure you get rest AND don’t go into a deep sleep. Because you’re only waking up to finish editing (it pays to have about 99% of the assignment done before you got to sleep if it’s due in the morning, or at least 80% if it’s due at 4pm), a sleep of up to 2hrs is ok. This way you won’t look so dead when you hand in your assignment, classic signs of an all-nighter that won’t impress your lecturer or tutor too much if they catch you and you’ll be able to look at your assignment with relatively fresh eyes (remember the rule they always tell you, finish your assignment and then leave it for a day before doing the final edit? Yeah, well if you’re at the all-nighter stage you don’t have a day. 2hrs will have to be enough).
Of course, the length of sleep depends on how much you’ve finished and how confident you are of getting the final editing and proof reading done quickly. Try not to have a very long sleep though otherwise you’ll end up sleeping through any alarm you sleep. This does depend on how tired you are though. However, if you’re the all-nighter type, you’ll probably be pretty tired by this stage as it probably won’t have been your first for the week.
This leads me on to procrastination. I’m pretty bad (or good) with procrastination. I tried to stop myself from getting to good at leaving things to the last minute but unfortunately for me, that only lasted one semester. After three months of summer holidays and working full time for about two and a half months of it, my procrastination was back stronger than ever.
I think people do reach a point though where they are sick of the constant tired feeling and knowing they have to spend valuable sleeping hours slaving away over a 25% essay. There are several brilliant ways to procrastinate, you don’t really need a guide to procrastination, even though the chances are that most of the people reading the procrastinators guide will either be: procrastinating themselves; or: gathering ideas for the next round of procrastination.
My vices are facebook, various text based rpg games and forums. Msn chat has lost its appeal, but that is also a great way of procrastination. The conversation always cries for attention, turning away from it for even a few moments feels criminal. Now that facebook has a chat application, the procrastination hours are facing an increase.
I think the saying: find a job that you love and you’ll never work another day in your life is fairly accurate, but how realistic is it? Most things come about with hard work which is what uni and various other methods of institutionalisation seek to teach every student no matter how unenthusiastic or uninterested they are. However, I think some of the greatest procrastinators have come to love doing anything but what they are supposed to and constantly test themselves to see how efficient they can be when it counts. We all know how satisfying it is to get an A for an assignment that we did in a couple of days versus a B- for an assignment that took us weeks to finish.
It’s all about being smart and not over estimating your ability to perform when it comes to crunch time.
==End==
If you read that you must be feeling slightly crazy now (or desperately bored) so I do apologise for that.
However, it took me about 32mins and 43 seconds to write that. Quite sad how I run out of things to say when it’s time to say them…
I will add photos of the field trip when I get to a computer with a decent internet connection. Uni's network is a bit bogged down by students excited at the prospect of free internet, even if it's slow.
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