Me: I thought I’d use this summer to catch up on some readings, learn more about different theorists, understand more concepts, and delve  into more ideas surrounding our discipline.

Professor: You can read the things you think will help with your research. Or you can read the things you think will help with your exams. But if you try to read everything, you’ll never succeed. There is far too much out there. You’ll spend your life in circles chasing after the citations mentioned in each book.

I already do this online. Can I afford to do it in books, too? Or maybe I started in books, and it carried over my online methods as well. I seem to chase after things, in a never-ending quest to reach…what? The end? Is there an end?

This is a problem in how I approach my studies, too. I want my writing to be perfect. But then I read something new and I realize that my research is so far from perfect that I become paralyzed with the fear of turning in a less than stellar work. What happens then is that I end up turning in something even worse because I have to rush through it to get it done after spending so much time agonizing and worrying over the concepts and theories that came before.

It’s a vicious cycle.