I think I am on information overload. I have noticed that my attention span has gotten shorter. I constantly have to have new things or else I get bored really, really easily. Like I'll start a book but before I finish it I'll start another book that sounds more interesting and then finish neither one. Or when I read blogs, which are themselves very friendly to a person with a short attention span, I find that I can't even finish a reading a whole blog entry. I have a ton of blogs bookmarked and I just skim through one after the another. And I'm addicted to TV, and I don't study nearly enough, and I need to read more papers to cite in my thesis, and on and on and on...

I guess I just want to have the discipline to actually get through something important and do a really good job. Not that I want to get all uptight and obsessed with perfection, but just to have more structure and focus and not always feel like I'm doing a second-rate job. School, case in point. I've been content to get B's, but how much more work would it take to get an A? Or to do a really great job on my thesis project, instead of just doing the minimum of what I need to graduate?

I'm thinking about this mainly because on Friday, I had to do a mock career fair interview and a presentation for my research group. I think I messed up on both things. The career services guy, this really enthusiastic guy with red hair and bad teeth, interviewed me. He got really into the mock interview, he made up all this stuff about the fake company he was "representing" and took it really seriously. I was completely unprepared. I had no idea what to say, especially since working for the Florida headquarters of the parent company of McDonald's isn't exactly my career objective. I stuttered, I couldn't think of questions to ask, it was completely horrible.

Then the meeting, well, I know I was talking way too fast. Even I couldn't follow what I was saying. Again I didn't prepare very well. There were points of my own proposal that I was uncertain about, and I didn't handle that well. I guess I could have ironed that out by more in-depth preparation, or I could have found a way to gloss over the details or something. Again with the short attention span thing, maybe if I hadn't spent three hours watching Survivor, CSI, and ER I could have been more prepared. Yeah, I guess it bothers me that I have trouble with public speaking. I get nervous, and I expect criticism of every thing I do. It gets where I stop paying attention to what is going on around me and all I can think about is how nervous I am and how everyone thinks I am such an idiot.

I guess these are things I should practice on. Fact is, this is my practice. That's why I do these things, so I can can get practice with public speaking before I go out into a real job. So far, I haven't had much success. I wonder what I'm doing wrong.

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be able to get a job. I was able to land a job with a real company once, but what if that is the only time I'll ever be able to do it? Or what if I'll only be able to get crummy jobs and I'll never be able to make myself stand out from the pack and do something great? I guess that's what scares me, and I'm seeing more and more every day why you have to find excitement in what you do, or else you will come off looking fake and dispassionate, and you will never be motivated to excellence.