Like the title says, school has really been tedious for me, and I'm just looking for any advice or similar experiences. I just graduated from undergrad in May, and now I'm just coming up on finals for my first quarter of grad school. The problem is, I drag my feet and avoid work like the plague. And I've been doing it for a while... I was a pretty diligent student for a long time, but ever since I took a semester abroad I've just been so hesitant to do school work.
Part of the problem may be that I don't feel I'm studying to improve my situation, but rather for check-in-the-box degrees (although the material is interesting, and I'd like to learn it for its own sake). I already knew what my job would be from the start of undergrad, and that remains now. For the first two years of undergrad I was fighting to get into the best grad school I could, but then that battle was pretty much settled before the second semester of my junior year. Now I'm in the same boat once again, trying to find internal motivation in the apparent absence of external motivators. The only differences between a good year of studies and a bad one would be taking my research to a conference, establishing good relationships with my professors, gaining a strong understanding of the material, enjoying my year in one of the nicest places in the US, and improving my health before I get into my much tougher job in a year.
So, to anyone who's been in a similar frustrated, stubborn rut with school, how did you get out of it? Ask me if you want to know more specifics about the situation; I'm having trouble sorting out what's really important to share (versus what just makes a tedious wall of text) but I'm happy to share!
I hope this is the right place to ask this advice. I'm looking for some thoughts from some like-minded people.