Pixar Movie Advice for Finals Week

Yes, I know this is Saturday, and that means I'm supposed to post something really deep and thought-provoking. Go back in the archives to find one of those posts if you want to.

However, since I have lots of friends still in college who are studying for finals (or, you know, they should be, anyway), I present to you...

Seven Pixar Clips That Will Help You Ace Your Exams

I didn't actually use clips from Monster's University, because that would be too obvious.

Seriously. Animated movies hold a lot of wisdom. Also, I like these clips and wanted to give you an excuse to procrastinate for ten minutes. Enjoy.

One: Toy Story

Finals Week Takeaway: Nothing beats an highly organized plan of attack. Your chances of acing those finals are better if you treat studying like an all-out war.

Two: Monsters Inc.

Finals Week Takeaway: Discipline pays off. And montages make everything better. You probably should create one of your studying routine. (Vocab flashcard drills and coffee runs would make a super interesting training montage. Quality stuff.)

How to be a Conversation Terrorist

(Part Three of "Things I Learned In College.")

 

Okay, so the title of this post sounds way more violent than it actually is. Some of you are probably thinking, “Um…how does Amy’s mind even work?” And the answer to that is…it’s complicated. But I’ll try to explain this one.

“Conversational terrorism” is my name for what happens when, for some reason, you need to hijack the conversation. People are talking about something that you’d rather not talk about, and you need to act quickly to redirect the course of the conversation. Except in this case, it’s a positive thing, unlike terrorism. So maybe it’s a bad analogy.

Anyway, here are five of my best tips for hijacking a conversation, particularly if your friends start to badmouth another person.

One: “Well, I’ve learned that for everything I find annoying about someone else, there’s probably something about me that gets on their nerves.” Or a similar speck-log-we’re-all-humans-and-have-annoying-things-about-us type of statement. Sometimes it’s helpful to remember that I wouldn’t want people talking about all of my flaws and faults when I’m not around. And they totally could, because I have a lot of flaws and faults.

Two: “I can’t judge. I wouldn’t want their job. Can you imagine how stressful it would be to….” Or a similar put-yourself-in-his-shoes statement. Because sometimes we judge people by the fragment of their lives that we’re experiencing right now. This is somewhat similar to opening a book to a random page in the middle and seeing the main character say something mean and condemn him without looking for context of any kind.

Three: “Hey now. That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?” Or a similar point-out-that-you’re-kind-of-being-a-jerk statement. This is more direct and has the potential to make the other person defensive. A likely response is, “I’m just saying it like it is.” At which point you can try 1 or 2, or say something positive about the person being gossiped about or just shrug and move on with a different conversation.

Four: “Okay, this isn’t fair. He’s not even around to defend himself.” Can be said in a joking-not-joking kind of way, or just straight up serious. People usually get the point without feeling backed into a corner. Everyone secretly hopes no one is talking badly about them behind their back. It’s a simple Golden Rule thing.

Five: “Hey, did you know that giant squid’s eyes can be as large as a beach ball?” This is not just a random subject changed. After I saw this comic strip, I looked up some facts about giant squid to use to abruptly (and slightly passive-aggressively) change the subject away from gossip. It’s actually pretty fun to do.

There you have it. Five of my favorite conversational terrorism tactics. Use this information responsibly, my friends.

How To Manipulate Yourself

(Part Two in a series of "Stuff Everyone Should Learn in College. Last week's was "How Not To Fall In Love With Everyone." Moving on to academics....)

This could also be called “How to do things you don’t want to do,” but self-manipulation is a more interesting way of putting it. Seriously, though, motivating yourself to get unpleasant things done is a fascinating study in your own psychology.

For example, I really like eating cookies. They’re not particularly healthy. So I figured out something that I liked to do more than eating cookies: giving cookies to other people. Perfect.

And, if I had a daunting research paper to write, there were several tactics I could take to get myself to work on it.

           
A. Convincing myself that the topic was fascinating and important for my personal development (this actually worked with a lot of my exegetical papers).

         
B. Planning a movie night or board game party…but only if I got the work done.

            
C. Giving myself a stirring speech about discipline and the value of a liberal arts    education.

           
D. Dressing up. (Seriously. When I wore business casual, even around the apartment, I got way more done because my brain thought I was doing real work.)

            
 E. Rewarding myself with chocolate. Really sophisticated, but hey, whatever works.

Obviously, that list is going to look different for different people. But when you've got a stack of homework to do and you'd rather be on Facebook, you need to know what's going to tip the scale from "want" to "should."

It’s not like that covered every scenario in my college career, so I could do every mundane task with perfect joy and happiness. There were times when tricks wouldn’t work—I imagine that’s true for everyone. Sometimes, even if you know yourself so well that you can find all of your motivational triggers, nothing seems to work to make you feel like doing whatever it is that needs to be done.

And then you do it anyway.

Yep. That’s it. That’s basically the secret to how I got good grades in college.

Added bonus: a big part of being an adult is doing things you don’t particularly want to do. Sometimes you may be able to trick yourself into enjoying doing the dishes for the hundredth time…but sometimes you won’t. And sometimes you won’t want to go to work or love your spouse or deal with a discipline problem with the kids…but you do it anyway.

Practice now. It’s going to be a long life if you don’t learn this one early.

But, I mean, you might also want to keep some M&Ms around. Just in case.

How Not To Fall in Love With Everyone

(Part one in a summer series of basically the most important life skills I learned or started to learn while in college. It’ll go on as long as…well, as long as I can think of important things I learned while in college.)

Easily the most annoying interactions I had at college were talking to or overhearing girls who described the attractiveness of guys around them, and the comparative unworthiness of the girls those guys were currently dating. (Which was occasionally followed by complaints that guys objectify girls. And as much as I love irony, when it’s mixed with equal parts hypocrisy and cluelessness, it’s a little much.)

If you ever find yourself about to start in on one of those conversations, let me say one thing really loudly and with all of the emphasis I can possibly muster:

HE’S NOT YOURS.

Right now, I kind of want to launch into a rant about how, if you can’t stop yourself from daydreaming about someone in a relationship, you plan on stopping yourself later when that person is married. And how, contrary to popular (read: Hollywood) belief, you actually are in control of your own emotions.

But then I realized that’s not even the point (and that I could say it a lot shorter just by summarizing it in one paragraph). Because even if you are dating someone, he or she is not yours.

Let me explain.