10 Lies We Tell Ourselves Every Back to School Season
1. “I’m not going to procrastinate! I’m going to get my work done ahead of time.”
This lie lasts approximately one to two weeks. It’s like the New Year’s resolution of college. That is, until the work from all your classes start overlapping and one class takes precedence over another due to its earlier deadline. Or just basic life happens and assignments get pushed back to deal with whatever life threw at you. Or you just get lazy. Oops.
2. “I’m going to study every day!”
This lie doesn’t make it past day one. You open the book after the first lecture, maybe read a paragraph or two, but then you get hungry. Eh, you can study after lunch, right? Then you open Netflix while you eat lunch, and it’s all downhill from there.
3. “I’m going to pay attention every day in class, and take in-depth notes to review later.”
Like lie #1, this one lasts about two weeks until that fateful day when you forget your notebook, so you say you’ll just pay attention and not take notes. Then you start getting lazy and figure paying attention is enough - you can just review it at home and take notes then, just like you promised yourself. But does that ever happen? No.
4. “I’m going to get to class early.”
For the most part, this is probably the lie that lasts the longest. But that’s mostly because “early” is subjective. Five minutes before is still technically getting to class early. However, the later in the semester it gets, the later “early” becomes. It may start with getting to class thirty minutes early, but by the end of the semester you’re just barely walking through the door on time.
5. “I’m going to be healthy, and exercise on my downtime from classes.”
This lie is a bit of a tricky one, because it’s a lie we tell ourselves more than at just the start of a new semester. We always try to be healthy, regardless of the time of year, but it’s difficult to be healthy and exercise when you’ve got a ton of homework and exams piling up. If nothing else, this is the one that people try the hardest to stay true to, even if the diet and exercise habit will eventually be broken. It happens.
Related: 50 Lies All College Students Have Told Themselves at One Point |
6. “I’ll get dressed up for class.”
This one can be so time-consuming, which is why it’s easily left behind once the novelty of a new semester wears off. For those of us that have early morning classes, it’s really difficult to get up in the morning and care about the way we look. I always tell myself that I’m going to try harder. No sweatpants, no leggings, and no sweaters. This lasts a decent amount of time… until it gets even a little bit chilly. Then I forget I ever told myself this, and I break out all the clothes I swore I wouldn’t wear to class anymore.
7. “I’m going to stay on top of cleaning my room.”
Personally, I am a bit of a slob. There, I said it. Which means that I will always lie to myself about being neater. However, lies like this one never last more than a couple hours. I’ll clean everything once, then just let everything pile up again until the mess becomes unbearable. Then I clean everything again, and the cycle repeats. But when you’ve got tests, and midterms, and finals to worry about, who cares about a few dirty dishes?
8. “I’m going to read the book and take notes.”
We spent all this money on textbooks, so we might as well put them to use, right? We start off strong, reading complete chapters and taking notes on all the key points, but eventually all of our homework piles up and we resort to good ol’ Sparknotes to fill in the blanks.
9. “I’m not going to Google answers for my homework. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll search my notes or the book for the answer.”
This is the biggest lie of them all. We have the internet at our finger tips 24/7, and there’s no way any of us would truly let that go to learn in the old-school way. Sure, we have textbooks and other resources available to us for finding answers, but that will never stop us from Googling.. One of the questions might be copy and pasted straight from the book, and we’ll still end up turning to Google for the answer to double check that we were looking at the right thing. Google knows best, obviously.
10. “I’m not going to skip a single class this semester.”
We pay a lot of money for our college classes, and if we have big life goals (for me it’s becoming a veterinarian) we do need to learn as much as we can. But, no matter how good of a student you are, there will always come a day where you won’t want to go to class. So you don’t go. If you’re a good enough student that one missed day won’t make a huge difference, but you never know! Either way, if you can keep this promise to yourself, you might just have some sort of super power.