the things I should do

I won't sugar-coat it: I can be uber lazy.

I was extremely motivated to lead many extraciricular lives in high school -- from the School Board to cheerleading to Student Council and Students Against Drunk Driving.

I believe the laziness officially took hold at some point during my spring semester freshman year in college. This is probably not uncommon. But it took hold in a big way for me. It started with not doing my French homework about once a week. I didn't like taking French; I wasn't good at speaking or reading or understanding French; I had no interest in going to France or any other French-speaking location. So occasionally I skipped my French homework to talk on IM with my then-long-distance boyfriend, or to download the latest Dido song on Napster, or to Dome-jump (its not half as dangerous as it sounds, by the way. Not only am I lazy, but I am also quite cautious). After that, I eased into my laziness a bit more... to procrastinating on papers and studying for exams. Then I toughened up. I stopped studying French altogether. At my final oral exam, Spring semester of my freshman year, the only phrase I rehearsed walking up to meet my professor was, "I don't know." I said that 15 times during my exam (he counted). After, my professor told me (in English) that it made him sad that I had so little interest in this, considering I had told him I was a reasonably good French student in high school. I admitted that that meant that my French teacher in high school liked me. I couldn' speak the language worth a damn, but she just liked me. After that, I had fulfilled my language requirement, and stopped speaking French completely. Now, the only thing I remember is "c'est impossible!" and that's only because I am newly obsessed with Dinner: Impossible on the Food Network and the show makes me think of that phrase. Because everything Robert Irvine does is impossible!! (In my dream last night, he was playing the role of my boyfriend. Also impossible.)

Later on in college I stopped studying for exams -- even finals -- altogether. The only class I ever studied for was my Television Crit classes. Partly because I cared, but mostly because my professor's tests were unbearably difficult. Once, even when I did study, I got a 52% on my exam. To my credit, though, after taking my third class with this prof, I was scoring 98% almost every time. For the other classes, though, I favored watching Sex & the City on DVD with my roommate to even looking at a book. But, as a television major, that wasn't the worst possible thing I could do.

Now my laziness flucuates wildly. As I've posted before, I occassionaly forgo work for watching Grey's Anatomy at my desk. While other times, like last week for example, I don't give myself a minute to breathe non-publicity-related air while at work. This week I am back to being lazy. I am already contemplating which episode of Grey's to watch tomorrow.

The thing about being lazy, at least for me, is that I spend an awful lot of time thinking about the things I should be doing instead of being lazy. In college it was that I should have been doing some kind of assigned reading. Today it was that I could have called a few more journalists to pitch my client's latest product.

But I don't. Because I'm kind of lazy.