I can’t help but wonder if there is any point at all in continuing my education at this university. Knowledge just doesn’t seem to be as appealing as it was when I first started attending Iowa State almost three years ago. My classes don’t seem to hold any importance to life in general, and I’m not any closer to graduating than I was a year ago.

Honestly, there are about a thousand other things that I would rather be doing right now than reading Aristotle, an anthropology textbook, or writing this column. None of it seems important anymore. None of it seems relevant, either.

It doesn’t help that I can’t get anything done no matter how much effort I summon. I’m lethargic, I’m bored, and I’m lazy. I’m not scared to admit it, either. Nothing seems as fun as it did at the beginning of this semester. Maybe I’m just suffering from burnout. But I don’t think it is as simple as that. I think that it has to do with some deeper psychological problem that I can’t quite put my finger on.

Have you ever had one of those days where you just don’t want to get out of bed? I feel that way every day. Yet I persist in torturing myself every morning by climbing out of bed, getting dressed and driving up here. Every morning when I wake up, I realize that I have at least one hundred things to do during the course of the day. But I don’t feel motivated enough to do any of them.

I seem to be procrastinating more than usual. Instead of writing term papers, I find myself staring blankly at the computer screen wishing that I had a computer game other than “Doom.” I seem to be in the mindset that I’ll do everything tomorrow, yet tomorrow comes and I decide to put everything off for another week. Now, I’m so far behind in my classes that I doubt that I can ever catch up.

My procrastination has even stretched to other parts of my life that once held a priority, like The Drummer. I’ve been working on a story about the homeless situation in Iowa for that fine activist publication. Unfortunately, I’ve been working on this story for almost a year now. Currently, it is no closer to being done than when I completed the interviews almost nine months ago.

I just can’t seem to gather the energy to organize the information and actually write it. I’m positive that it would only take me roughly an hour to complete it, yet I can’t seem to sit down for an hour and do anything. That would require an hour’s worth of thinking, and I just don’t think that my brain could handle that.

I’d much rather sit down and stare at a blank wall for an hour than pick up a book that I know is good, like Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road,” and read it. Hell, at this point in time, I’d rather starve than spend a half hour cooking something to eat. Yes, I’m that lazy.

But I wasn’t always lazy, and I think that is the most difficult part. I can remember a time earlier this semester when I was at least one week ahead in every class. Even going into Spring Break, I was doing pretty good, although I had plenty of stuff to finish. None of it got done, and most of it still isn’t done.

Maybe I’ll gather the strength and courage to finish my homework tonight for class tomorrow. Or maybe I’ll go home, play with my son and put everything off until after Veishea. All I know is that I’m lazy, and my laziness and procrastination makes me depressed, which makes me want to kill myself. Fortunately, I’m too lazy to do that either.

Ben Jones is a sophomore in English from Ankeny.