TRY-ed and Tested

*The next entries are personal accounts of two of our group members narrating their experiences with cramming and time management


The Extreme Opposite of Cramming

(The following is a contribution to our group’s Rosetta Stone series. It is a reflection on a first-hand experience of cramming’s extreme opposite, which may lend insight into how our group could go about solving our problem.)

I thought I’d give some insights on how it’s like NOT to cram, because doing things last minute really isn’t my thing. I’ve been raised to resist time pressure, and I completely won’t stand a chance in it unless I have some sort of schedule to follow. I’ve ingrained the discipline since I was in grade school, since it was how my parents raised me. I grew up with the mindset that anything and everything I was presenting had to be of the best quality, and that meant having to prepare for it.

I’ve gone through various approaches to sorting out my school load. It all began with a simple assignment notebook, a practice from my grade school days. We had to have them signed by our parents so that our parents knew we had things to submit. And my folks took this knowledge seriously—they made sure that I completed my work (and completed it well) even if it entailed having to sit down with me an entire weekend. I’d have to admit that grade school was an important turning point in terms of my self-discipline, largely because of my parents.


It’s interesting to note from that recollection that I wasn’t naturally born with this work ethic; it was something either picked up by me or forced into me during childhood. I’m at the dilemma of “picked up or forced into” because my parents treated my brother and I in the same meticulous manner, yet I grew up with a far more “informed grasp of the present and the future” than he did. Although he’s responsible enough to do relatively well in an honors course in college, my practices would be scandalous taboo to him. Despite this attitude gap we ended up in, I can never stress enough that meticulous manner of my parents’. For the sake of keeping things civil, they were rough and conservative in terms of their approach to discipline. Achievement was praised, while failure was punished in ways even the Filipinos of the Spanish era can relate to.

Naturally, this sort of treatment could not keep going as I grew older. They started to distance themselves in terms of their involvement (and punishment), but made sure that the drive to succeed remained. This is where the gap between my brother and I began to widen. I seem to have been wired to always root for success and fear failure, while he just made sure to avoid failure and celebrate what successes came his way. The upbringing took root and became hard-wired in me, that today anything I receive unsatisfactory marks for disturb me. I can’t even blame anyone else for that (not even my parents or my upbringing) but myself. This drive caused all else to fall into place, most critically my approach to dealing with work. At present, I have a computer task management program, a text file, and three calendars (one on my phone) to make sure I’m up to speed and in control of everything. I don’t just calendar tasks on their deadlines; I calendar times when I work on those tasks, creating daily agendas for days even far away from today. But hey, this entire ruckus is also partly justified by the increasing amount of work moving up the academic ladder, culminating in the impossible heap of workload that is college.

The downsides are clear. From my experience, the obsessive-compulsive nature of being in control over everything (where everything can mean a ton) can really drive you into moments of high stress without even getting anything done yet. For people like me, the big picture is the first thing in mind. Give us a project and a deadline, and all sorts of possible repercussions start speeding by in our heads. We just tend to hide it with a smile and the words “Sure, got it,” but it drives people like us crazy. This can also spell disaster for group work where members more often than not are “normal” people, turning us into walking time bombs of pent-up agitation.

Though it can sound bad, I’d be the first to say that it has its upsides. Being a macro-level person makes you naturally detail-oriented, and you get to see (a lot of little) things other people can’t. Also, the discipline of sorting yourself out will (most likely) lead you to succeed in your endeavors. Not only do you actually perform, but people also end up noticing your work ethic and praising you for it. You become the prime candidate for team leader, project head, and even org president! You gain the respect of people who, very likely, can’t (and won’t) imitate your habits. :P

So that’s my take on the extreme opposite of cramming. I’m sure there are others out there who approach work the same way I do, and even more so of others who will never even consider approaching work the same way I do. I myself don’t know if this part of me is something I’d like to keep. Although it can cause me a lot of stress at times, it might just take me places in the future.

*Mark Castillo

The Extreme Meaning of Cramming

(The following is a contribution to our group’s Rosetta Stone series. It is a reflection on a first-hand experience of cramming, which may lend insight into how our group could go about solving our problem. And what's a better way to get insights on cramming than to cram this entry itself!)

It's 10:53am, about 67 minutes before the deadline and I'm just starting on this entry for our group project. Don't worry, I'm used to this. There's not a month during my 16 years in school that I did not cram (except during summer; I'm always early during summer). The time pressure and the risk of getting an F is enough motivation for me to go god-speed and pour my whole heart out into what I'm doing. I not saying that I don't know how to manage my time; in fact I manage it well enough to get 8 hours of sleep everyday, something I believe will give me more quality output with my activities than to do it when I'm in a groggy, sleepy, cranky state. Think of it simply as just switching the time I allot to the activity from 2 in the morning to right before the deadline. I dunno about you, but it really helps me get the job done, at least in my case. In this case, I allot an hour for the activity.

56 minutes. I'm also not saying that I can't do this work earlier; I could have finished this already and devoted my time somewhere else. But I did not, and there's surely a reason why. I believe that this reason covers at least half of all the reasons of cramming people give: I'm just not motivated. I'm not motivated to do some things at once. There is no drive within me to excel or even finish some work early. Maybe if it was a different thing, something I am excited about, something that interests me, I'd jump right to it: and this has happened; in fact it happens a lot too. Not that I don't like school work (in fact there are some school projects which I devote a lot of time to, and finish early for that matter), but there really are just some things which I prefer to do more than others.

44 minutes. Then there are priorities. I'd rather invest my time in things which I hold more valuable than others. Friends perhaps (just simply hanging out and burning precious, valuable time). A new experience I want to do (I just came from my very first mountain climb over the weekend!!! It's in Daguldol, Batangas. You can see the ocean from the summit! Now that's an experience. BTW, this was something I did not cram.). Whatever it is, the top priority one gets done first, and I make sure I give the amount of time and effort proportional to how I value it. Things that I don't put as much value, they got done too alright (and never will they not be done), but with less amount of time. (Now I'm not saying that I don't value this entry, 67 minutes is more than enough to write one.)

37 minutes. Of course, there are bad habits I continue to do. Just to be totally transparent with you, I forgot to put this in my planner (teehee). Now, I don't know if I really forgot to put it there, or I chose not to (because I had other things [other priorities] in mind). Whatever the reason, this bad habit of not reminding myself is something that has to be corrected. I can give whatever reason I want with having little time to do work (or having poor output), but to say that I simply neglected to do the work is no reason at all. Even if I cram a lot, never has there been an instance where the work was not done. Let's put some responsibility into cramming, at least. And there are other bad habits, like totally not following the planner at all sometimes, but surely, we want break free from the control of the planner from time to time: we are human (whatever that implies).

25 minutes. Then there are distractions. I've checked my Facebook account thrice during the whole time that I wrote this. Maybe the lack of focus makes me do these things (or possible I have an undiagnosed case of ADHD). But surely, this is another bad habit I have to get rid of. Maybe I did not allocate myself to a more appropriate place and mindset, hence the distractions. Ultimately, bad habits are my fault. I can never blame these on anyone else but me.

14 minutes. Now, after this experience of writing this entry so close to the deadline, let's get to this question: am I really cramming now? Personally, this is how I define it: even if I allot just 5 minutes to do this entry, if I know and firmly believe that I could not have made a better output with a larger amount of time and resources, then I can say that I did not cram. Cramming only happens when I know I could have done more, and because of my "irresponsibility" (like forgetting to write it in the planner) and misallocation of time and resources, I failed to do the best possible output I could have done. As for this entry, you be the judge whether I crammed or not. I have my own criteria.

Well, what do you know, I've got 9 minutes to spare.

*Joel del Rosario