Blogging Around: Alex's "Get Organized" and Ethan's "The Past and the Future"

In response to Alex's Get Organized: Shaping up my Desk and my Work Ethic

In this entry, Alex details how he overcame laziness and apprehension to clean up his messy desk, and how doing so helped him with his work.

I smiled as soon as I read the title to this entry. It's a subject familiar to both my mother and myself, and recently, it's become somewhat of a battle - she hates the sight of it, but I rarely use it to do work anyway; I much prefer the office desk.

After reading this entry, though, I'm impressed by your ability to turn what was a jumbled mess into a place where you can do work efficiently. Maybe I can finally get some use out of the desk that's gone unused for so long.

I was also struck by how similar my reasons for not cleaning up are to yours - both general laziness and a fear of how time-consuming such an undertaking would be are big problems for me. I constantly use the excuse "It'll take too long; I can do it later," but of course, "later" never actually arrives.

Bravo on cleaning your desk up, and best of luck working on it.
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In response to Ethan's The Past and the Future

In this entry, Ethan explains two dilemmas he had during the first semester and how he's going about fixing them.

It's fascinating to me how similar our experiences in this year's English class (and most of our writing careers) were. I had that exact same philosophy before this year: catch hold of the general idea and run with it. My results were about the same as yours.

A suggestion for the writing: certainly don't be afraid to scrap ideas that aren't working out for you, but I wouldn't advise totally forgetting about them either. They can come in handy later, as your second idea will often be connected to the original.

As for your grades, that's a perfect way to go about school. I've realized something more this year, too: it's more fun when you don't have to worry about other people's assessments of you, and you'll consequently get better grades anyway.