Matthew Murdoch, former teaching assistant, Department of Psychology
My first year as a TA began with a great deal of stress. After taking time off following my undergrad degree, I enrolled in a new university, moved across the country, and arrived the day before my first day of official duties. To add to this, I was experiencing mild culture shock due to having recently returned from a summer spent working in India, which certainly didn’t make the transition any easier. Despite everything that desperately needed to be done, I found myself paralyzed by indecision. Should I finish unpacking, or should I explore campus? Should I take care of university paperwork, or should I get to know my advisor?
This indecision dragged on for weeks, with the paralysis temporarily subsiding whenever an urgent task required attention.
Unsatisfied with just doing the bare minimum, I decided that something needed to be done before I had relegated myself to being “that guy” (you know, the one who does nothing, barely gets by, and somehow seems OK with it? Yeah, that guy). Knowing myself to be terribly disorganized and dedicated to responsibilities, I decided that the only solution would be to commit myself to as many extracurricular activities as it would take to completely fill my schedule. That way, I thought, I’d leave little room for poor time management, as a full and busy schedule would manage itself.
Although I didn’t quite achieve this goal, I did manage to find myself a great part-time job (off-campus), enrolled in an extra course, and fulfilled a life-long goal of learning to swim by enrolling in adult swimming lessons. To my surprise, the added responsibilities did not have the expected negative side-effect of everything being done at the last minute, as I very quickly learned to prioritize efficiently (nothing quite like necessity to catalyze change!). I found myself finishing assignments and papers with enough time for revisions, breezing through stacks of marking, and somehow fitting in ample time to focus on my own personal projects (which, strangely enough, include sleeping regularly). On top of this, the job added a bit of a cushion to my bank account, thus freeing up all of my worrying abilities for my various academic responsibilities.
As counterintuitive as it may sound, my solution to the problem of having too much responsibility was to take on more responsibility. My backwards logic might make some of you wonder how exactly I’ve managed to come so far in my education (I often wonder this myself!), but it really has worked for me. This isn’t saying that it will work for everyone, but it might appeal to the disorganized overachievers who, like me, have consistently found themselves disappointed with conventional academic advice.