At least once a year I feel the need to start a column with, "I have a confession to make..." So here's mine for fourth year.
I have a confession to make, despite my seemingly cool demeanor and air of general chillness, I can be a little high strung. I frequently fall victim to something which various Internet searches tell me is called "analysis paralysis."
Normally analysis paralysis is a business term, which according to The New York Enterprise Report means "the phenomenon of spending so much time and so many resources on gathering and analyzing data, that there's little or no time or resources left to act on all that analysis."
Although the report is referring to the practice of conducting wasteful expensive studies, the definition is pretty apt in my own life.
I often spend so much time overthinking things that by the time I've arrived at a decision, either the best moment to act has passed, or I've worked myself into a frenzy about some minutiae that really weren't that important to begin with.
It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly when this chronic condition began, but I generally associate it with the arrival of text messaging as a regular form of communication in my life.
As an English major, I'm kind of obsessed with words anyway, so you can imagine how a mode of communication in which it is so hard to understand the exact tone of a comment would drive me a little insane.
I think part of the problem is that punctuation is so varied in text messaging. I find myself wondering things like, "Is that person using an exclamation point just to break up the text and sound friendly or are they genuinely excited about what they are saying to me?"
Don't even get me started on emoticons - for the record I think they are extremely stupid. I can waste 10 minutes trying to decide if my own response seems unfriendly or overly serious without a little colon and parenthesis happy face at the end.
And yet, as much as I would like to blame my overanalyzation habits on the incessant march of cell phone technology, this is not the only area of life where I overthink. I vividly remember a first year conversation with my RA right before the first time I attended office hours; I anxiously made her discuss the right decorum when talking to a professor - namely whether I should have addressed the professor in question as Professor, sir or by his first name as he did when he introduced himself in class.
It's looking back on moments like these, which are laughable to me now, that makes me realize that my overanalyzation is not something that is rooted in the expansion of colder forms of communication like email and text messaging. Rather, it is the result of inexperience.
I say this because I've noticed that I am not the only victim of this habit, and it seems to be especially prevalent among people our age.
How many times have you seasoned students chuckled at a first year freaking out about something that you now know ultimately doesn't matter? Or for the older students, how often have you wasted time excruciatingly examining the possible implications of every word in a cover letter sent to a potential employer?
We're at the stage in our lives when we find ourselves flooded with new experiences for which our brain does not yet have a catalogued reaction. I'm able to draw this conclusion not from any intensive lab study or specific statistics - remember, I'm an English major - but from observing trends in my aforementioned texting problem.
I've noticed that after I get to know someone better, I no longer get worked up trying to discover the exact meaning of his messages; I already know. The same is true in other situations. We become more comfortable when we understand the context.
Until then, whenever you find yourself debating the pros and cons of adding an exclamation point, take a deep breath and then make a decision already. You'll never figure out the best response if you spend forever just trying to choose one.
Katie's column runs weekly Tuesdays. She can be reached at k.mcnally@cavalierdaily.com.
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