Happy Holidays and Ponderments

Happy holidays! I’m finally on break, and it feels absolutely wonderful.  Tuesday was my last day (rather late but oh well), and it is such a relief to have nothing to do for a whole twelve days.
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Anyway, on to the post.  I’d just like to say that I apologize if this post sounds a little boastful. It isn’t meant to be; the information is just to try and back up my point.

A few days ago, as I was thinking about doing my research paper and how much I procrastinated on it, I came upon an intriguing thought.  Is procrastination really detrimental, or is it actually helping me?

I took a vocabulary test this past Monday.  It was on three units of vocab, which consisted of a total of 60 words.  As usual, I had extremely procrastinated and didn’t study until homeroom.  I looked over the words for the 20 or so minutes that homeroom lasts for, and then took the test the next period.  When I got it back the next day, I had gotten an 87.

Granted I had already a general idea of what about ¼ of the words meant, but an 87 after 20 minutes of studying surprised me a little.  Previously, I would also study on the bus and a few minutes before homeroom, which was about an extra 20 minutes, and I would still get high 80s.  I had never waited until homeroom to start studying, and I wasn’t expecting to be able to remember as many words as I had.

I remember the vocab units I had back in elementary school.  They consisted of only 15 words, and we only did one unit at a time.  Nonetheless, I would study for about half an hour and even have my dad test me on those fifteen words.  I usually got full marks on the vocabulary tests back then, and granted if I did study more for my vocab tests nowadays I could probably still get full marks, but the rate at which I retain information now astounds me, something which is all thanks to procrastination.

I also tend to be able to produce somewhat high-quality work in a short span of time.  Last year, for English, I always ended up typing my papers the morning of the day they were due on, and I never got lower than an 86 (I’m pretty sure anyway).  For a creative writing paper that had to compare a modern day song with a book, I did it at three in the morning and got a 92.  The same goes for my research paper, which got a 90.  I remember hearing people complain about the long, agonizing hours they put into their work, while I just did it in the shortest amount of time possible.

It does make me feel a little cheap though, because I spend little effort on my work and earn good grades, while people who put in tons of effort may/may not end up with a good grade.  However, this may be helpful in the future.  What if someone’s asked to do something in a few hour’s notice (and I’ve heard this does happen in workplaces)?  People who are used to taking their time will be panicking frantically.  Meanwhile, it would be easy for me because I’m used to completing things at the last minute.  This would be a very helpful trait in that situation.

While I’m aware that there are many negative effects from procrastination, right now it seems that it’s helping me in a few positive ways.  I am able to rapidly memorize things.  I can produce decent work in short spans of time.  I also find time to do things when there is seemingly none.  Due to this, it makes me wonder if procrastination truly is as bad as people make it out to seem.
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Anyway, I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa, happy holidays, and have a great new year.

Praise for the Inheritance and Twilight Series

I got bored and happened to glance upon the back of Eldest. There I saw a plethora of “praise” for Eldest’s prequel Eragon. I had never bothered to read the “praise” before for any book, so I skimmed through them, and some of the lines I felt I just had to comment on.

“Unusual, powerful, fresh, and fluid. An impressive start to a writing career that’s sure to flourish.” -Booklist, Starred
-Let me just say that the four adjectives used to describe Eragon contain a little too much bravado for the book itself. Unusual and fresh? I think not; the book was littered with all the usual clichés. Powerful? Yes, Eragon was a rather powerful Gary-Stu. Fluid? The book flowed like mud – if Eragon were a movie, the use of the “fade out” transition would be a little overused …oh wait…

“Will appeal to the legions of readers who have been captivated by the Lord of the Rings trilogy.” -School Library Journal
-I don’t think many Lord of the Rings fans will be “captivated” by Eragon because they will open up the book, see the millions of LOTR parallels within the book, and be slightly annoyed. I mean, seriously, Arya is clearly Arwen (speaking of Arwen, there’s also a lake called Ardwen Lake), the history of the elves is extremely similar to LOTR, Orik is Gimli, Brom is Gandalf, Eragon has the weight of the world on his shoulders much like Frodo…all you need is a ring instead of Saphira and a few short humans and you’d have LOTR in a nutshell in Eragon. Also, the last time I checked, the average age of the LOTR fan base is quite a bit higher than the average age of the Inheritance fan base.

“An auspicious beginning to both career and series.” – Publishers Weekly
-Too bad the “auspicious beginning” never proved to be very auspicious, well, at least the series didn’t. It got from the alright to the bad to the ugly. I at least could walk through Eragon and crawl through Eldest, but I was drowning in seas of flamboyant description and boredom in Brisingr.

“Christopher Paolini make[s] literary magic with his precocious debut.” – People
-*Snort* *Choke* What? Literary magic? Precocious? A much used saying around the land of the anti’s is that Eragon is published average fan fiction, which I agree with. Precocious indeed. And now he’s what, 23 I think, yet his writing style hasn’t matured at all. Then again, I don’t think he has either, so I guess I can’t blame his writing style solely then. As for literary magic, I have nothing to say to that. The word choice does make me giggle though.

I then went on to my next least-favorite series: Twilight. One glance at Breaking Dawn’s back cover had me lose faith in humanity very fast.

“[A] near-genius balance of breathtaking romance and action,” -VOYA
-Hm…my memory isn’t the best, but from what I remember, New Moon was where Edward became a dick and thought his actions would be the best and thus moved away for most of the book, was it not? Therefore “breathtaking romance” is not the first way I would describe New Moon because it was the one book in the series that lacked the gooey, sappy romance (for most of the book anyway). Action: oh yea there was definitely some action going on when Bella tried to commit suicide. Anti’s were probably cheering and jumping for joy during that part, but unfortunately she lived. Ah well, you can’t always get what you want in life. Otherwise New Moon was rather monotonous – Bella hung around with Jacob, started to cheat on Edward in her mind, and then became all angsty. I think I summed up a good portion of the book right there, and “breathtaking romance and action” was definitely not used anywhere.

“Move over, Harry Potter.” – USA Today
-’Scuse me? Harry Potter will not budge, thank you very much. Whoever thinks that Eclipse is even slightly capable of overtaking Harry Potter needs to start opening their eyes and looking at reality. Harry Potter is a phenomenon; Twilight is lucky fiction.

“[Meyer is] the world’s most popular vampire novelist since Anne Rice.” – Entertainment Weekly
-Only because Meyer combined aspects of fantasy with drama and the typical teenage girl’s dream. What if Edward had an unsightly mole on his nose? What if he were disabled? What if he actually looked like he was 100? What if he didn’t sparkle? What if he just wasn’t …perfect? *gasp* Do you think Twilight would have the same amount of readers then?

“An exciting page-turner….This tale of tortured demon lovers entices.” – Kirkus
-Ahahaha. They called Bella a tortured demon. Loool. And yea, it definitely is a page-turner, especially when you’re flipping through the pages really fast because you can’t endure the brick of a book any longer and you just want it to end.

What a nice note to end the day on (I wrote this last night before I went to bed). Inheritance and Twilight hate, yay!

PS: I find it funny that people will put “I don’t read” in the “Favorite Books” section of Facebook. Clearly you definitely don’t read because you don’t read anything for school, you don’t read instructions, you don’t read labels at shops, and you don’t read signs while driving your car. And you’re definitely not reading this.