Who knew Breaking Bad was so good?
Okay, sure, fine. Everyone, all right. Everyone knew that Breaking Bad, the award-winning story of a high-school chemistry teacher and his descent/ascent into the life of a big-time meth king was a tremendous show.
I’d heard about it, but never checked it out. Until I decided, one boring weekend afternoon, to give it a try. I was instantly hooked on the characters, the situations and, well, just about everything. Yes, I understand that, for a show revolving around addiction, that statement has a great deal of possibly unintended irony. It still stands.
So I started watching. And watching. And the next thing I knew I was finished with the seven-episode first season and was ready for more. The only problem was that the afternoon was gone and evening had taken a runner. Time, you see, had slipped away while I was watching this.
It’s something I began thinking about again when I was talking to both Zippy the College Boy and Hyper Lad. Both are studying hard at their respective schools, University of North Carolina Wilmington and a Falcon High. Both have time-management needs that must be fulfilled if they’re to do a good job in school.
The difference is that Zippy the College Boy is doing it on his own, while Hyper Lad has help. That is, his parents are likely to come around and thump the back of his head if he’s goofing off and not using his time wisely. Well, perhaps not wisely, but at least well.
Zippy the College Boy is out on his own and, knowing him as I do, is not using his time either wisely or well. He’s a smart kid, who learned well during high school, both his academic lessons as well as the things that his teachers had to say about how best to study. The problem is there are far too many distractions for college students, especially for those with ADD and/or a learning disability.
Time, for people with those disorders, is much different. They, even more than most people, can get involved in something and never notice the passing of time. Even if it’s studying, that’s probably not a good thing, because there is more to study than only one subject or one part of a subject.
Despite my words of encouragement on the subject, Zippy the College Boy still relies on his internal clock and a sense of when things are due for his time-management skills. I understand. I was the same way in college and for most of my life after.
However, I’ve come to understand that I’m a lot more like Zippy the College Boy, Sarcasmo and Hyper Lad than I had thought. I get caught up in things as well, and not just episodes of compelling television like Breaking Bad. I’ll start writing and never even notice four hours go past and I’ve still got work to do other than the writing.
Enter the futurephone. I’ve become somewhat reliant on the thing. I will look at my list of to-do items for the day and decide how much time needs to be devoted to each item. Then, when I’m starting that item, I’ll set the alarm on the futurephone to that number of hours or minutes and work until the alarm goes off. I also use the calendar app to schedule when things are due. I’ll set up a repeating schedule to make sure I’m continuing to work on things with plenty of time left before deadline so I’m not caught in a crunch.
I tried to work on those things with Zippy the College Boy and Sarcasmo, but the whole futurephone thing came along too late for those dudes. Not so with Hyper Lad.
He’s the one on whom I’m really experimenting with using the futurephone for more than games. So far, I think it’s working. We’ve still got work to do, especially considering that he got homework detention for not turning something in during the second week of school. Still, it’s good to have a path laid out ahead of him.
Now we only have to make sure he stays on the path.
