I Want to be in the Zone. Where is my Zone!?

When it comes to homework -- be it reading some delicious text or working on Hebrew homework -- I am so susceptible to my environment. I have to find and stay in the zone. What is the zone you ask? It's that place free of distractions, free of the wrong kind of noise, free of all the things that make me stop and fixate on something other than my homework.

You see, I have absolutely no will power.

I know, that's a huge fault. A horrible fault. It's why I dedicated myself to Weight Watchers last year and tried not to have a TV in my dorm room (but that girl last year was just giving it away!).

I'm attempting to read Chaereas and Callirhoe by Chariton for my Ancient (Jewish) Fictions course. (Note: I dropped my Sexual Politics/Women in Tanakh course, but that's for another post at another time.) I'm sitting here, with the book sitting next to me, and for some reason I can't pull myself away from trashy VH1 "reality" shows filled with potential murderers and definite narcissists. Their ridiculousness has captured me, more than a classic ancient fiction can. Why is that? Why is it that the horrible reality of being a tool is more riveting than a story of love, lies, and Aphrodite? Is it me? Am I weak!?

At any rate, the point is that a learning environment is important. For me, this means no television, no computer, no distracting noises (but definitely some type of music, probably Itzhak Perlman or something similar), no noisy people, no distracting items on the walls, or places with a lot going on all at once. Interestingly, I could blog in a hurricane or wind storm or with hail beating down on my face and fingers.

What's YOUR zone? How do you focus? Can you make homework and important things happen with kids running around, things flying across the room, the TV blaring, and noise elevating every second? How do you make yourself walk away from distracting things? What's your secret?

Help!

Pardon me while I step away to lose my sanity.

Our Bible class professors finally gave us our review sheet for Thursday's test. Yes, that's this Thursday, as in two days from now, and yes, today is Tuesday, and yes I'm a little irked that they waited until the last minute to issue it to us. A few of the grad students are all fancy and free -- "It's review! It'll be easy!" -- while I, the ultimate worry wart, am poised for a long two days of preparing and typing up notes with which to study, as I did with all of my Judaic studies courses in my undergrad. I collect, I type, I study, I quiz myself. But this time, I only have, well, less than two days really, to prepare. Yes it's all Documentary Hypothesis and the importance of the Bible stories chucked in with the legends/myths of antiquity, but a girl will worry. Throw a Hebrew test onto that for Friday and the rest of my week is going to be quite dismal. Of course, I still don't have my plans mapped out for the weekend, either. Maybe I won't go to New York. Or Boston. I could take a friend up on her offer to go to a local fair, but it just isn't striking me as the thing to do this weekend. I want to be city-bound for drinks and perusing busy streets. But we don't always get what we want, do we?

So you'll find me the next two days, in Babbidge Library, hunched over a computer, a pile of books, pages of notes, and probably a coffee or two or three.

Maybe I'll hang up a do not disturb sign.

Until I return from my couple-day stressed out study frenzy, please gather solace and amusement with this fun video that Tamara shared via Twitter last night. It makes me smile with delight!


EepyBird's Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.