Much Motivation Needed

I am a Butler veteran. I used to study in the fourth floor undergraduate reading room daily as if it were my own room. People even facebook-ed me asking if I was the “cubicle girl”. Tragic, really. But this year, I have only been to Butler three times for merely a couple of hours each visit. Maybe it’s because I now live on 110^th or maybe I just lost the inspiration to be a disciplined student. It’s odd because this semester is by far the busiest for me. I am taking three language courses, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, along with an introductory drawing class. If you ask me, that’s a whole lot of busy work. I am an economics major, though my schedule causes everyone to assume I am an EALAC major, and deadlines for my business paper are starting to roll in.

If I came to my room, sat at my desk like a good student and studied, I would have no problem with my workload. But I have a problem. Okay fine, more like an obsession. I am completely obsessed with baking. It has been my favorite pastime for years, but this semester is different. There is no mother nagging me to stop heating up her kitchen and this semester my dorm room is conveniently equipped with an oven. Though it obviously isn’t the greatest, I’m starting to get used to it’s quirks and have located it’s hotspots. Anyway, I usually bake every chance I get, but I recently realized that I was starting to schedule my studies around baking. I think it was the night before when I had to memorize 180 Chinese characters for my Hanja quiz in Korean. Instead of pulling out my thick packet of characters right then and there, I decided to hold off the studying until 6 am the next morning. Why? Because I suddenly had the urge to bake an extremely time consuming batch of rich brioche. It was when I started to pull out a block of butter from my refrigerator that I realized I wasn’t a student if I was willing to forego my books for an oiled bowl and spatula.

I’m hoping that my realization lasts long. I’m not doing horribly in my language classes and I am getting all my work done, but learning a new language is a constant effort. Is there anything I could do to motivate myself to really start studying? I think I’ll have to start living at Butler again starting this week. If anyone sees me ogling the melon pans at Jasumato or lugging sacks of flour, please do drag me to the library.