A Confession of My Failings Thus Far

To say that I have become idle in regards to the EPQ is an understatement. Even though I can excuse my laxness (and subsequent failing of my most minimal goals) down to a busy, essay-heavy summer, I cannot excuse my deliberate feigned ignorance when it came to even the slightest thought of the letters E-P-Q strung together. I've documented my uncertainty with my original concepts, and the hope I had in reinvigorating it with doing another artifact with close, tendril'd relations to my original idea, finding that these are incompatible with my current frame of mind. To blame it on a muse and throw my hands up in defeat is not my aim, however.

I want to change from an artifact to an essay.

I would have considerable ground to catch up on, and would have to densely-compact it around my studying (for which takes my top priority), with length sessions to feel I can compete with others in my group. I do feel that I can do this. However, this will need to be discussed with my supervisor, so a final decision may take time.

To finish on a low (though hopefully one self-aware enough to seem slightly sardonic), I will recount the little goals I've missed on the 'An Introduction' post:

• Manage your time - I attempted this, and when I possessed a passion for my artifact this wasn't an issue at all. So, one pass at least.

• Be practical - I'm a dreamer at heart, and dreamers are quite bad at realizing the practicalities of something until it smacks them in the face. While I idly thought of the finished product and my glowing pride, I gave little thought to making decent headway until all energy was sapped from me, and highly-personal circumstances made the idea unattractive to me.

• Be thoroughly organised - again, a sting. When I had this 'muse' of mine, I was intensely organised, especially before college broke up for the summer.

• Know what you're doing and when it's being done - have a definitive action plan - while I may have been organised in the beginning, I had little concept as to where I wanted to take my ideas and how I would record it. What little action plan I had was incredibly vague and unhelpful, and leaves me bitter - if I had a better action plan, would I have been able to persevere with my artifact?

• Keep motivated - my motivation waned like the moon and was dreadful to deal with. While I'm usually so spirited and driven with my academic subjects, I suppose my lax attitude towards my create work hindered my motivation and its potency. 

• Enjoy yourself! - If I had done this, I might be recounting a post of how pleased I was with all the work I did over the summer. Simply put, I lacked any form of enjoyment. It was as if even thinking of the EPQ by the latter weeks summoned a Dementor to whisk away any passion or pleasure I could have for the project. My morbid idea was only appealing when I did not have to deal with the realities of the situation, and the nature poetry idea was pleasing when I thought I would be encountering more nature. 

From these observations, I have to take away a heavy but important message in regards to my work ethic. However, if I find it feasible to continue with the EPQ (and I am able to adjust it to an essay), then I will leave myself these bullet points as reminders and motivators:

• Manage your time; work efficiently and intelligently.

• Be practical, but be critical of your initial assumptions of what 'practical' means. Just because a concept seems 'interesting' or 'unique', it does not make it viable or approachable. The less of a clue you have about gathering resources, the greater the probability that the idea is impractical.

• Be organised to a frightening extent: have as many contingency plans as possible, colour-code everything, and have lists longer than your arms of possible sources - but have them sorted alphabetically, of course. Perhaps make a Gantt chart?

• Know what you're doing and when it's being done - have a definitive action plan that encompasses contingencies and human error. 

• Keep motivated even when things seem particularly bleak, and find ways of bribing yourself to complete a set amount of work regardless of its tediousness.

• Try to enjoy yourself, and remind yourself of why you're doing the EPQ in the first place.