Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Motivation for Arduous Projects

For my Honors English class, we have to do three things over the summer:
1. Rewrite the ending of "Of Mice and Men"
2. Make a project based on "Shane" (I've figured mine out)
3. Figure out the main idea of each paragraph in "Civil Disobedience"

One and two sound easy and interesting, but I'm doing three first, and I can't handle it! The essay is hard to understand, and to make things worse, I can't motivate myself to work on it consistently.

We're any of your kids in remotely similar situations? Please help me somehow. I don't want help with analyzing the actual essay; I feel like that's cheating. Rather, how do I get working and stay that way?

If you have the whole summer to finish this, kudos to you for starting now.

I would actually take a break from the assignment that you are currently struggling with. I sometimes find that it helps to let it rest for a day or two and then come back to it, and you do have time to do that. When you come back, I would read the whole essay first, and then start breaking down individual paragraphs. If you understand the whole thing as a gestalt, it may be easier to summarize the parts.

Good luck! I wish I'd had assignments that interesting for high school English.

Thank you. I guess I'm probably getting a little burnt out and/or obsessive, but I'm paranoid about procrastinating for too long and not having time.

Believe me, I understand that paranoia. It will serve you well when you are in college or at work. But if you have a deadline that's a ways away, it's good management to look at it now, but let it percolate in your head for a little while before you get started writing. Like, you've figured out what you want to do for the second project, but you haven't started it yet. The idea will probably mature for a few days, and you'll be able to put something better together for spending some time thinking about it. As long as you have enough time that you can afford to wait those few days and still get everything done, you might as well take it.

You've received great replies already. I'll just add that dividing a project into smaller individual tasks is sometimes called the Swiss Cheese Approach to Time Management.

To break the work down into smaller bits so that you can enjoy the success of accomplishing each piece, I'd probably begin by counting the paragraphs in Civil Disobedience.

If there are 44 paragraphs and you have 10 weeks until the assignment is due, then you may wish to distill at least 5 paragraphs per week down to their main idea in order to have a steady and stable workload. This would mean completing at least 1 paragraph per day.

Do you have a paper copy of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau? If not, you may wish to print it from the link above, where it is 16 pages long. If you have a printed copy, it is easy to write the numbers next to each paragraph, and place a check mark next to each paragraph when you have completed its summary.

Is your work to be typed, or handwritten? If it is to be typed, this makes it very easy to address the paragraphs a bit at a time. In your document, begin by typing the number of each paragraph. This creates a form with space for each part of the assignment. Then fill in the synopsis next to each paragraph number. If you find paragraph 2 to be a bit difficult or require more time to think about and process its meaning due to its length, you could feel free to skip paragraph 2 for the moment and go on to paragraph 3. You will see the blank space next to #2 in your form document and that will remind you to come back and fill that space in when you have thought of a way to summarize paragraph 2.

It can be very interesting to read old text, because the expression of ideas has changed over the years. In addition to different phrases being used, new words are always being added to the dictionary, while other words are being marked as archaic and falling from common use to be seen only infrequently. Civil Disobedience was first published in 1849, 167 years ago. If it was written today, how would it be worded? Have fun with this.

agree with dividing and conquering.
but also giving yourself small rewards (tiny snack or break or something after say a 20 or 30 minute chunk of work).

I would probably avoid having it stretch out for 10 weeks...egads, that would just about kill me.

You've received good advice. I just need to know: how you plan on changing the ending of Of Mice and Men? It is my favorite work of literature -- I re-read it annually and cry every time.

@Ivy--I'm not sure yet, but I have some ideas. I'll probably PM you in case my answer spoils it for anyone else.

Thanks, everyone. I'd like to consider this closed, because I finished the Civil Disobedience project thanks to your tips.

Finished? Wow! Good for you. Enjoy your summer!