Procrastination!
For the record, when I started to type in the title of this post, Safari auto-filled. Clearly I have posted about my procrastination proclivities before.

I've discovered a brilliant new technique:

Redesign your professor's power point slides!

It started out as a good idea--put the three or four most important slides from each lecture (the class in question averaged about 35 slides per 3 hour lecture, and there were 10 lectures) into one presentation. Then run the slideshow a billion times until you have it memorized.

One flaw: if you have studied strategies for effective power point presentations, then your professor's slides won't seem good enough. A former prof of mine likes to call it "power no point" since most presentations are designed to make the least important part--the header--the most memorable. My most recent professor didn't fall victim to all the bad habits (which include, among others, slides that say "three strategies" in enormous bold text and then list the three strategies in tiny fonts), however he did fall prey to the "I have tenure and therefore it doesn't matter if my slides are ugly" trap.

So I pulled slides. I made a new document with the most relevant ones. This helped studying. Then I ran the slide show once and got really sick of the white-text-on-taupe-background-with-bad-clip-art style that my prof seems to favor.

The really brilliant thing about this form of procrastination is that you think you are being productive, and therefore are entitled to regular study breaks.

On the upside, at the end of this endeavor I will have 25 really nicely designed slides that convey the most important points of the course. I will also have lost about 4 hours of my valuable study time.

Good thing I'm taking the day off work tomorrow to study.
- posted by Heidi @ 10:45 PM