"To Err Is Human, To Fritter Divine"
Taken from Stan Bernstein, "Getting It Done: Notes On Student
Fritters". In Lofland, J. Interaction In Everyday Life: Social
Strategies, Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, CA, 1978.
FRITTER - A fritter is "a justification a student, or teacher
gives to himself or herself for not doing student/teacher work in response
to felt pressure to work."
How Does Frittering Work?
A time-symmetry fritter brings the student up to 8:45 p.m., the biological
imperative fritter and a phone call for commiseration fritter promotes
study avoidance until 10:00 p.m. An experience-broadens fritter takes one
to the residence hall lounge for a discussion of STD's and enables study
avoidance to 11:00 p.m., which may be sufficient to set up a great divide
fritter- for who can really do any serious studying after 11:00 p.m.?
The Biological Imperative Fritter
The biological imperative fritter justifies study avoidance by appealing
to the biological needs for food, drink, sex, and so forth. For example,"I'm
hungary, let's go down to the vending machines and get something to eat."
"I can't study when I'm hungary, let's go get something to eat."
"God I'm so horny I can't concentrate, let's get out of here."
The Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness Fritter
The cleanliness is next to godliness fritter justifies work avoidance
by the need to be and feel clean in order to study effectively. For example,
"I gotta go take a shower, I can't study feeling dingy."
The Fatigue Reduction Fritter
The fatigue reduction fritter justifies study avoidance by the need
to engage in activities that will forestall sleep and promote the concentration
needed to study effectively. An entire battery of work avoidance tactics
can be justified by their necessity in keep the student awake in order
to study more effectively (e.g. preparing and drinking cups of coffee,
long walks, running the stairs ,or jogs in the cold weather). For example,
"Damn, I'm going to go out and run for a while, I can't concentrate
on this stuff." "I gotta get some sleep, nothing is more important
than your health." "I'll get up early tomorrow when I'll be able
to concentrate."
The Rest On Your Laurels Fritter
Employing past accomplishment as justification for present work avoidance.The
"you owe it to yourself" fritter, used upon completing a paper,
project, or exam to justify work avoidance, the avoidance period being
defined as self-payment for a job weil done.
The Time-Symmetry Fritter
The time-symmetry-fritter refers to students inclination to find it
easier to start studying on the hour, on the half hour, on Monday, this
weekend, over spring break.
The Great Divide Fritter
The great divide fritter is employed when there comes a point in the
evening when it becomes too late to get any serious work done anyway, making
it necessary to give up for the rest of the night all pretence to studying.
For, example, "you never can get anything done after midnight anyway,
let's go get a pizza."
The Scheduling Fritter
Students often justify spending enormous amounts of time making up
work schedules. Plans can be made not just for the coming work, but also
for coming work breaks. Scheduling fritters become a consideration whenever
something goes wrong, or could go wrong with the schedule, indeed the more
detailed the schedule the greater the chance of derailment and work avoidance.
The Shuttle Fritter
Students often indirectly avoid studying by searching for a place to
study which is most conducive to concentration or a location which "feels
right" - the residence hall, friend's apartment, the union, the quad,
the library, the first floor of the library, the quiet area in the library,
and so forth.
The First Things First Fritter
These fritters involve appealing to all the activities that must be
completed or attended to in order to study effectively: getting books,
paper, pens, and so forth. For example, "God I can't study in this
rubble, I gotta get organized."
The While-I'm-At-It Fritter
This is an escalation of the first things first fritter. The first
things first fritter is easily escalated to cleaning the desk top, the
desk, and to avoid the crucial point where studying must actually commence,
the entire room or apartment. For example, "Damn roommates, I got
studying to do and I gotta spend time cleaning the apartment, who could
study looking at this mess."
The Higher Good Fritter
The higher good fritter allows the student to rank being a student
as less important in his or her scheme of values that other interests and
aspects of one's identity (e.g. friendship, love, cultural values, physical
fitness, and political interests). The "search for identity"
and "getting your shit together" are important tasks when compared
against the mundane task of studying.
The Rare Event Fritter
The rare event fritter is a special type of higher good fritter. The
primary justification for study avoidance is based on the "never have
another chance" quality of some events. For example, "The Stones
may never tour again, what are you going tell your kids if they ask you
if you ever saw the Stones, you have to go, its non-negotiable." "The
next total eclipse of the moon isn't until the next century, what are you
going to tell your kids if they ask if you saw the eclipse of the moon
when you were in college?"
The Experience Broadens Fritter
The experience broadens fritter is less specific in the sense of providing
a less clear cut value conflict, the crucial difference from the higher-good
fritter is that any experience will do to justify study avoidance.
The Existential Fritter
The most general and abstract valuative fritter is the existential
fritter, or what-the-hell-sort-of difference will it make anyway, in which
the decision to study or not to study will have no practical or lasting
effect on the course of one's life.
The Einstein Failure Fritter
The Einstein failure fritter justifies study avoidance by referring
to the scholastic failure of prominently successful individuals, (e.g.
Einstein's failure of high school math, or Dan Qualye's and Ted Kennedy's
academic irregularities).
The Commiseration Fritter
The commiseration fritter involves getting together and consoling one
another on the unreasonableness or irrationality of the assignment, the
arrogance of the instructor, the intolerable and unjust workload and so
forth. For example, "all the communication instructors we could get
and we get the `speech teacher from hell', I don't believe this assignment."
The Social Comparison Fritter
The social comparison fritter involves comparing your progress on an
assignment to that of others; when a student discovers he or she is ahead
of others in his or her work the student can then feel justified in freeing
time for study avoidance. For this fritter to work students must compare
their work with someone who is less advanced than they are, and fail to
take account of the progress of others who might be farther ahead or have
already completed the project.
The Decision To Study As A Group Fritter
The decision to study as a group involves getting a number of people
together in order achieve the synergistic effects which often comes from
pooling individual talents. However, getting a number of people together
functions to increases enormously the range of alternatives to studying.
It almost mandates social commiseration and social comparison fritters.
While studying in groups there is often a "risky shift" in
the direction of longer fritters, too. A risky shift refers to the tendency
of groups to make riskier decisions than an individual might make alone.
In a group it can be face-threatening to suggest to your partners that
it is time to get to work and thus, there is a diffusion or responsibility
for work avoidance. The net result is that often no one is willing to take
responsibility for accomplishing the goal getting people together was originally
designed to accomplish.
The Call The Professor At Home The Night Before The Exam Fritter
This fritter often accompanies the decision to study as a group fritter
and often occurs toward the end of the semester. After studying for a couple
of hours, groups will often engage in "group flight" looking
for alternatives to the task at hand. At a point in time there may come
a question or problem which no one seems to have the answer, and calling
the instructor at home seems like a novel and interesting experience. Often
the study group will pass the phone around in order that each member of
the group can let the instructor know that they are studying/frittering
diligently with their study group..
The Tenured Professor Computer Fritter
Professors are really professional students. They also employ a broad
range of fritters for not doing their research or enhancing their instructional
effectiveness. The tenured professor computer fritter justifies work avoidance
by suggesting that in the long run increased productivity gained by the
computer justifies the enormous amount of time learning various software
programs e.g. space invaders, command pilot, checkbook wizard and so forth.
The Let It Brew For A While Fritter
Every creative endeavor has an incubation period. One does not embark
on the creative enterprise of studying without sufficient contemplation
and full consent of the will. The let it brew for a while fitter justifies
work avoidance by the need to wait until one is bursting with ideas or
sufficiently motivated to achieve one's true potential.
The I'll Lie Down And Think About This Fritter
The I'll lie down and think fritter justifies work avoidance by the
need "to take a load off" and to rest one's body in order to
devote one's full biological powers to the process of thought. The possible
danger in this tactic, is, of course, very clear, listing all things people
are designed to do horizontally, studying is one of the lowest on the list.
The Jack Of All Trades Fritter
The jack of all trades fritter is a way of avoiding working too hard
on any one course, by shifting from subject to subject before the work
gets too taxing in any one of them.
The Incredible Shrinking Work Fritter
Given the bone-crushing pressure of being a college student and having
to study sometimes up to 15-20 hours a week, (about 1/3 the time some of
your jobs in the real world will demand) students may find that their assigned
work cannot be done as originally desired in the remaining time before
it's deadline.
It is then possible to employ an incredible shrinking work fritter
which justifies work avoidance by claiming that one's original assessment
of the demands of the assignment were in error. For example, even though
the instructor handed out a three page sample full-sentence outline of
what the assignment should look like, a student can employ the incredible
shrinking word fritter to justify their one page thirty-seven word key
phrase outline claiming that "we never did outlines that were that
detailed in high school, he couldn't possibly want one like that."
