I dedicate this little thought to my daughter who believes that life is so simple, that plans are not that important in order for a human being to function well. She is in high school, enjoying her time but when deadlines strike, especially those unannounced type, she loses her equilibrium. She then starts to cry; and of course, though crying would help ease up some tension inside, I always tell her that, at the moment, it's useless. She could cry later on after all work is done.
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I used to cram up school work at the last minute in high school, also in college. Especially in college! Even now, I have that bug in my system. That meant, I would have the entire night doing everything, fitting all of the projects, home reading reports, assigned topics within the time frame before the next day's deadline. But that did not mean I will only have to start from scratch at that time.
Weeks before the deadline, I would have set the direction of what school work I had in hand. I already knew the assignments, had read the topics and was getting ready for the reports to be finalized neatly -- it's just that they were all in my mind. It was the finalizing of all the stuff that I would do on the night before the deadline.
These days when teens say they would cram for their school work, they really meant they would fit everything from scratch into a very little time frame, which I find so irresponsible an attitude to begin with.
School work is all about beating deadlines. It is a course, whether in high school or in college, where one is taught how to manage time and divide the work into achievable portions while learning new things. It is applying what is learned in the limited time given by a teacher or a college professor to see if what was learned is properly applied.
If one can picture or imagine how a done task will look in the future (the deadline), no matter how long or short the time frame left for that particular task has, you would probably know how it would look, sound and feel and where you would want it to go. You are prepared for whatever disasters your task or project would meet along the way and have already in mind what other alternatives you could opt so as to push your project to the very end -- to make it look, sound and feel how it should be and where it should be.
Attacking the projects assigned or any home reading reports assigned to a student, as I was, is not without planning. The projects, home reading reports, topics for discussion, etc. must already have a framework built in your mind for it to stand, for it to come to life, and for it to grow. If one would just start doing a project, say on social studies, without knowing the limits or range of it all, it would end up with a lot of wastage of time, energy and effort where they were not supposed to be.
It is like the guy who said he wanted to build a boat from a fallen tree struck by a lightning. He said a boat would be so beautiful a thing to come out of that fallen tree. He started chopping off the branches from the sides of the bark and cut the tree in half. He removed the bark and started chiseling off some other parts to make it look like a boat, at least. In the middle of it all, when he realized that the work would take too much time, he decided to make a chair instead.
So he cut the bark he was working on for a boat in half so he could make a chair. Again, he started chiseling off parts he believed he would not use in making his chair. Suddenly, he thought that a chair is really not what he wanted to make out of the remaining bark. He said to himself that a wooden vase would be a better thing to do as it is small and it would be less work. But of course, he has to cut off what was to be a chair into something smaller for the vase that he said he would rather make.
In the end, all he had done was a toothpick!
What happened there? He lacked planning. When he said he wanted to build a boat, he could have drawn a plan for that boat because from the plan, he would see the entire operation of his project. He would see that it will take a lot of time, a lot of work, a lot of other things for the boat to come out. From the plan, he would see how he would want the boat to be -- the look, the feel, the smell, the taste of it, so to speak.
For a time, he would devote himself to build the boat. He would think of nothing else that would keep him from building that boat. He would talk about building the boat, breathe everyday of his life about building a boat, assume the guise of a man who would build a boat out of that fallen tree. His heart and mind is set to building the boat.
He will prepare himself for the obstacles to building a boat: like the weather; what other people will say; what the financial costs will be; what the emotional costs are, if any. His mind is set to just building that beautiful boat he wants to see himself in someday.
Oh, but no, in the middle, he changed his mind and set on to build a chair instead -- also without a plan. And all he got was a toothpick.
Well, it looks like a rather big illustration for just doing a homework plan; but it provides for someone to consider thinking first before the acting. Or all will all end up to a toothpick.
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I love you so much that I don't want to see you ending up with toothpicks from a grand idea. I hope you'd see what I mean whenever you think that I am too insensitive to what's going on inside you.
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