Procrastinating Engineer Posted November 14, 2022 Posted November 14, 2022 (edited) Finally decided to start my journey here after discovering this forum a few months ago. I'm a 22-year-old Engineering student who is forced to extend one extra semester in my university because of failed units. Causing my parents to fork out extra money for my tuition and accomodation fees, being behind my peers in starting my career and suffering the biggest dip in motivation and confidence, all because of this game with a funny idea of a car hitting a soccer ball into a goal some might know as "Rocket League". I wasn't much of a gamer since young, but during the Covid-19 lockdown in September of 2020, I got introduced by a friend to Rocket League which just became free to play on Epic Games at the time. I still vividly remember the first time I played it, my pupils were dilated, and I thought to myself: "Omg how have I not discovered this amazing game before? How does such a perfect game even exist?" Looking back at it now, the current me, having decent knowledge of gaming addiction, would have noticed these behaviours as the first danger signs for addiction. But me then lacked the awareness and thought it was just for 'fun'. So I started looking up tutorials online on how to improve and starting practising on a daily basis. I was steadily improving at the game in ranked and even had the ultimate goal of reaching the highest rank (Supersonic Legend) which usually took players at least an insane 5000+ hours to reach. However I let this false sense of achievement get the better of me as my grades fell from my best in the previous semester to my worst at the time, but it went downhill from then on. Rocket League was always my number 1 priority and it was constantly on my mind, even frequently dreaming about it during sleep (not joking). It got to a point where in the first half of this year my confidence and motivation became an all time low that I wasn't even completing and submitting assignments for several subjects, occasionally even having suicidal thoughts as a final resort to escape my dire situation. I got fed up of it and decided to get some help from a university counsellor with persuasion from my close friend. Many different methods were provided to me by the counsellor to help deal with my procrastination but none of it helped in the long term, mostly just to provide enough short term motivation to complete some assignments. I was up to 8-10 hours per day of gaming in my final study week before my final exams, not having studied a single word. Then I stumbled on Cam's Ted Talk and for the first time since I've been down the rabbit hole, I felt a surge of strength and light at the end of the tunnel. Cam's reasoning on why we get addicted to games struck me and I realized I've been using it as a tool to escape all the pain and non-stimulating assignments. Even though it was too late to salvage my exams that time, a switch in my brain flipped and after just 1 relapse during the break after that semester, I've managed to control my urges to play Rocket League and it has been 123 days since then as of this post (woohoo!). I've also learnt that its just particularly Rocket League that I find addicting and not any other games, credited to Rocket League being the only game with its unique game concept. But nowadays the most I do is offline single player games (because there's an end and no competitive ranks) and with my friends only. In fact I've even started to delve into game programming and am currently deciding to make it my career as I find it much more interesting than engineering. However, I'm not sure if its just because of my past addiction to games that I'm into game development or will my tendency to game addiction affect my career as a game developer down the road (any game developers who decided to quit games out there would love to hear your thoughts on this!). So as of now just continuing to hone my skills in game dev and wanting to reach out to more likeminded people in this community plus other places too. I'm still having issues with procrastination and Youtube addiction though, still finding ways to solve them. Thank you so much to Cam for allowing me to be part of this amazing community :). Gonna start posting once every day with good habits I want to cultivate and bad habits to eliminate. Hope anyone who sees my posts can gain something useful from my experiences and feel free to leave any suggestions or comments! Edited November 14, 2022 by Procrastinating Engineer 2
eaglemarin Posted December 9, 2022 Posted December 9, 2022 (edited) Congratulations on the 123 day streak! Well done indeed! I was in a very similar situation as you. I became addicted to video games in graduate school, also studying engineering. It took me a long time as well, after seeking professional help, to understand that I was using games as an escape from hard assignments. The friend who persuaded you to seek counseling is a great friend. Failing one semester really isn't a big deal in the long run. I know it can feel like a big deal that you're now behind your peers, but don't beat yourself up too much about it. You're gaining an opportunity to learn how to overcome a setback and this experience will help you build resilience and serve you for the rest of your life. For me, I failed my program, took nearly a 2-year leave, then went back and finished my degree. I've been gainfully employed for ten years since then and am mostly satisfied with where I am in life. There were short periods when I relapsed into gaming, I'm not perfect and I've learned to accept. Understanding the motivation behind gaming for me, as an escape, has allowed me to see gaming as what it is. Edited December 9, 2022 by eaglemarin
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