My Experiments with -Truth- Life (during exams)

Well 3 weeks ago I had my exam week. But hey, every student has exams. Whats so special about them? Well, exams days are special to me. Because during these days only, I don't know why, I do all kinds of experiments with my life, exams. Some of these experiments are pretty trivial like using black pen rather than usual blue ones, but some of them are so weird, I better not discuss them here. So, what all experiments did I perform during these exams? Lets see them:

Well, for all I know, the biggest time wasters for me are newspapers, Google reader, Gmail and Buzz. So, this time I decided to ditch them for the whole week (I repeat all four of them for the whole week ). Here are the results:

1. Newspaper: Well, ditching newspaper was actually the hardest thing to do of them. I have been reading newspaper since I have been reading. And I feel incomplete without going through them once in the day, no matter whether I have exams and a mile of syllabus to cover. Well, later I rue the fact that I spent I 90 mins on the newspaper, which could have proved to be golden if utilized for revision. This time also, I almost failed the experiment on the first day itself. Thankfully, I controlled myself and was able to successfully go without newspaper for the whole week. (And as luck would have it, I have been super-busy since, so haven't been reading newspaper regularly). 

Cheating: OK, I wasn't allowed to read the newspaper, but I can hear the news! So, spent 5-10 mins listening to news while having breakfast. 

2. Google Reader: Google Reader is the latest fad for me. Its almost rare that I go without having a look at the latest feeds any day. And if I don't control, I can go on spending hours reading blogs and bookmarking stuffs. But amazingly it turned out to be quite easy to ditch Reader for the week. (But had to lose on a lot of feeds for the week, as reading 1000+ feeds in one go was simply impossible later).

Cheating: I use Reader to follow the latest in the tech. Well, that can be done using newsletters too. Thank you Gmail!

3. Gmail: If my browser is open, most probably Gmail would be open in one of the tabs. Now, it wasn't practical to let go of Gmail for the whole week. So, I decided to have a look at mails only once in the whole day that too not for more than 15 mins. And well, though it wasn't easy I was able to do that.

Cheating: Well, I won't lie. I did fail in this experiment. On Thursday, I didn't study anything for exams. So, had a lot of time. As a result, did spend a lot of time inside Gmail. Lets not include Thursday into this experiment, OK!

4. Buzz: Another Google product that I use diligently and can spend a lot of time sharing stuffs here. I had tried to ditch Buzz for one week earlier also. And like last time I used Twitter only during the week. But unlike last time, I didn't turn off Buzz inside Gmail. As a result the no. of unread buzz post kept piling. It reached 14, but I resisted my desires to see what others were saying/discussing. Oh, how proud I feel.

Cheating: Actually on the first day itself, I tried to take a sneak peak into one of the Buzz post (just to find out the replier) delivered in the inbox (by right clicking). Couldn't actually see the content but the post got registered as read. Damn it. 

Well I stayed away from the above mentioned things to save some time to study. But wasted the saved time on other stuffs (why don't I fall short of reasons to waste time). But, what I got from performing these experiments is that, ' If I want, I can live without the above mentioned stuffs. They are not necessary for my survival '. Anyway, there were a few more experiments that I tried:

5. Programming: I tried to do/read about programming everyday (and you thought everything I write in my posts are just for namesake). Well, to tell the truth I could manage to do that on 5 days only. But the main aim was to get myself back on track as far as programming is concerned, which I think was accomplished to some extent.

6. Stationery will remain Stationary: Every exam week, I lose some of my stationery because of sharing it with my benchmate/neighbours, who blissfully take it with them after exams get over. This time I decided not to share anything, and to keep track of things in case I had to share. Curiously, I got to share stationery of my benchmate this time (kept mine under wraps, hehe)! But holy hell, I did lose my pencil this time too, not in the examination hall but at home. Damn it. So, as you can see none of the experiments was executed with 100% accuracy. But ask teachers, they will tell that 100% accuracy means you are cheating!