procrastination

As my college roommate can attest to, I am a master procrastinator. Yes, I am also a master planner, but that is for things I WANT to do. When it comes to the things I HAVE to do, I can come up with any number of excuses to postpone. Which is why, 3 and a half weeks into my "pregnancy disability" leave, I still had not completed traffic school. Yes, even with the impending birth of my child that would leave me no time to finish traffic school, and nothing else to do, I chose to park my rear on the couch and watch four thousand episodes of "designed to sell" and "house hunters" and "property virgins". I Just.Can't.Stop. Scout asked me if I was planning on moving while he was at work one day - he was getting concerned about my interest in house selling and purchasing. I can only imagine what he was thinking when he actually SAW me watching them, and I'm yelling at the people like it's the bottom of the ninth and they are down by a run... "You people are crazy - you aren't going to buy that house because it doesn't have stainless steel appliances? You don't like the paint color? REPAINT IT!"... Ahem, excuse me. Sorry, I get a little carried away watching home shows. See? I am even procrastinating WRITING about my task of traffic school. Moving on...

I think we all know that I got a speeding ticket recently. To avoid getting points on my pristine record, I opted for traffic school. Which, last time I took it (12 years ago), was in a dingy room somewhere in Virginia for 8 hours that felt like 8 days. God bless the advent of the internet. MUCH more pleasant experience this time... 49 minutes total, including interjections of emails, yelling at Scout about how stupid the questions are, and of course, taking notes for this post.

After registering for the course (twenty dollars), I was informed that it would be 5 chapters, with a quiz at the end of each chapter. Passing grade for each quiz was 80%. The reading material for each chapter was 4 pages long, with much scrolling down on each page. I browsed the material, then decided to just click through the pages, try the quiz, and see how I did.

Quiz 1: 70%.... so close
try again
Quiz 1: 70%... arghhhhh
copy/paste results into a word doc so I can reference the ones I got wrong, and not pick that same option again (narrowing my guessing to 1 out of 3, instead of 1 out of 4)
Quiz 1: 80%... YAY!

Here are some of the dumbest things from chapter 1:

• "In a recent study conducted it was found that 40 hours are spent in traffic that is NOT moving in 1/3 of US cities." Now, I can only IMAGINE how much money was spent on this study, and it makes me want to cry. 'Cause that statistic... MAKES NO SENSE. It has no time qualifier - is it 40 hours PER WEEK, PER MONTH, PER YEAR? Also, it had no point. Just that statement.
• "In a study recently, the average driver would rather spend money on public transit than on: a) new cars, b) roads, c) bridges, or d) private investments." As I was yelling to Scout in the other room about how I was coming up short in passing the quiz by 1 question, he retorted, "well, maybe you aren't as good a driver as you think you are". But I'm not sure how this question has ANYTHING to do with my driving skills.

For Chapter 2, I did a quick peruse (by "peruse", I really mean: glanced at the top portion of the first page), and scrolled down page 3. No method to the madness. I did note that they used a Wikepedia reference, and had pictures of a dude on a bike using hand signals. Which I still don't know what they mean. I prefer the method of: point in the direction you are turning when you are on a bike. All that studying led to me passing (80%) on the first try at the quiz.

I got cocky on the third chapter. Didn't even look at the title. Just clicked through to the quiz. Where I got a 40%. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. So I did. 100%.

For the fourth and fifth chapter, I also used the "no read" approach, and passed each on the first try with an 80% score, and only taking 2 minutes per chapter. Great use of my time!

I thought I was done, but there was more... a FINAL EXAM! I don't remember reading anything about a final exam (but then again, I didn't really read much at all, so it was probably there). Fortunately, it had almost all the same questions as on the chapter quizzes, and I passed on the first try with an 88%. Woo-hoo! So, my license remains pure, and I just have to drive nicely for the next 18 months, cause apparantly you can't do this every time you get a ticket (and honestly, if I learned anything from this online class, it is how long you have to wait between "get out of jail free" cards).

Now I am free to have this baby... or, um, watch more TV. Off I go...