When did they rescind Sod’s Law?
because plans screw up and there's nothing you can do about it!
Now, I want to start this entry by presenting the following extract from the novelization of one of my favourite sitcoms of all time Red Dwarf.
"In fact, it was now possible for Rimmer to revise solidly for three months and not learn anything at all.
The first week of study, he would always devote to the construction of a revision timetable. Weeks of patient effort would be spent planning, designing and creating a revision schedule which, when finished, were minor works of art.
Every hour of every day was subdivided into different study periods, each labelled in his lovely, tiny copperplate hand; then painted over in watercolours, a different colour for each subject, the colours gradually becoming bolder and more urgent shades as the exam time approached. The effect was as if a myriad tiny rainbows had splintered and sprinkled across the poster-sized sheet of creamwove card.
The only problem was this: because the timetables often took seven or eight weeks, and sometimes more, to complete, by the time Rimmer had finished them the exam was almost on him. He'd then have to cram three months of astronavigation revision into a single week. Gripped by an almost deranging panic, he'd then decide to sacrifice the first two days of that final week to the making of another timetable. This time for someone who had to pack three months of revision into five days.
Because five days now had to accommodate three months' work, the first thing that had to go was sleep. To prepare for an unrelenting twenty-four hours a day sleep-free schedule, Rimmer would spend the whole of the first remaining day in bed - to be extra, ultra fresh, so he would be able to squeeze three whole months of revision into four short days.
Within an hour of getting up the next morning, he would feel inexplicably exhausted, and start early on his supply of Go-Double-Plus caffeine tablets. By lunchtime he'd overdose, and have to make the journey down to the ship's medical unit for a sedative to help him calm down. The sedative usually sent him off to sleep, and he'd wake up the following morning with only three days left, and an anxiety that was so crippling he could scarcely move. A month of revision to be crammed into each day.
At this point he would start smoking. A lifelong nonsmoker, he'd become a forty-a-day man. He'd spend the whole day pacing up and down his room, smoking three or four cigarettes at a time, stopping occasionally to stare at the titles in his bookcase, not knowing which one to read first, and popping twice the recommended dosage of dogworming tablets, which he erroneously believed to contain amphetamine.
Realising he was getting nowhere, he'd try to get rid of his soul-bending tension by treating himself to an evening in one of Red Dwarf's quieter bars. There he would sit, in the plastic oak-beamed 'Happy Astro' pub, nursing a small beer, grimly trying to be light-hearted and totally relaxed. Two small beers and three hours of stomach-knotting relaxation later, he would go back to his bunk and spend half the night awake, praying to a God he didn't believe in for a miracle that couldn't happen.
Two days to go, and ravaged by the combination of anxiety, nicotine, caffeine tablets, alcohol he wasn't used to, dog-worming pills, and overall exhaustion, he would sleep in till mid-afternoon.
After a long scream, he would rationalize that the day was a total write-off, and the rest of the afternoon would be spent shopping for the three best alarm clocks money could buy. This would often take five or six hours, and he would arrive back at his sleeping quarters exhausted, but knowing he was fully prepared for the final day's revision before his exam.
Waking at four-thirty in the morning, after exercising, showering and breakfasting, he would sit down to prepare a final, final revision timetable, which would condense three months of revision into twelve short hours. This done, he would give up and go back to bed. Maybe he didn't know a single thing about astronavigation, but at least he'd be fresh for the exam the next day.
Which is why Rimmer failed exams.
Which is why he'd received nine 'F's for fail and two 'X's for unclassified. The first 'X' he'd achieved when he'd actually managed to get hold of some real amphetamines, gone into spasm and collapsed two minutes into the exam; and the second when anxiety got so much the better of him his subconscious forced him to deny his own existence, and he had written 'I am a fish' five hundred times on every single answer sheet. He'd even gone out for extra paper. What was more shocking than anything was that he'd thought he'd done quite well."
Now, over the past 15 years, since I hit the second year of High School, they have been forcing these bloody “Learning Plans” on me. Since many TNPers are probably still in education at some stage you’re probably aware of these things, they are basically a table in which you write down what you want to do, what you will use to do it and how long yu will give yourself to do it. (I would have included a visual example but Imgur is being a bellend…)
Now I have never in my life needed one of these, in fact my entire ability to plan is based around improvisation, I work better when having to deal with a small time frame and limited resources, it comes from being in a family that prized preparedness (for example I learned how to use a shovel as a frying pan as a child along with other survival tricks such as trapping and firemaking) so, for me, planning to anal levels, which is pretty much what this is, is a waste of time and energy, especially as I learn how to do something better by performing the action with a bit of trial and error. These things are utterly useless to me but have been the bane of academic existence for me since I was 12. As soon as I get this damned qualification the bugger is getting burned.
Nah i'm just kidding, enjoy my random rantings, my sweet little munchkins of TNP!
