1. Denial
This is the greatest stage of procrastination. You are completely overwhelmed by what seems like, never ending assignments. But rather than that feeling sparking motivation, it sparks the need to lay in bed and do absolutely nothing. You lay there and tell yourself that you deserve to rest up! You lay there and lie to yourself, trying to reassure your procrastinating self that there isn’t that much to do.
2. Confidence
Ok... so you realize there is, in fact, a TON to do. But you take a deep breath and overcome the feeling of being paralyzed by overwhelmed. You organize your thoughts and assignments, and write out a “Dead Week To-Do List”. Seeing a list of tasks, that take up an entire page, makes you feel like you are even more behind. But you reassure yourself that you will make it through every task. You are bubbling with confidence and the spirit of productivity.
3. Being Super Productive
You spend the first two days of dead week studying and writing papers for hours. The only time you leave your room is to get food, and if you’re not eating, you’re working on checking things off of your to-do list. You are getting ahead of the game! Well… at least that’s what you think…Oh, look! There goes the sun, again.
4. Taking a Step Back
You think you’re ahead of your assignments so you take a day to allow yourself to do minimal work. You allow yourself some “me time” to reward yourself for, what you think, is a lot of hard work.
5. Realizing You Have Stepped Too Far Back
Somehow it is suddenly Sunday and your finals start on Tuesday and you are nowhere near being prepared for them. You were way overconfident and now it’s time to cram your brains out.
6. Stu-DYING
This is it, it’s crunch time. Studying in your room is no longer productive. You grab the biggest iced coffee you can find and you station yourself at whatever table or chair is left available throughout all of campus. So that chair in the far corner of 4th floor LSC? Yeah, that is now your home for the next few days. You will spend a minimum of 10 hours in that spot, studying until your eyes feel like melting out of your head. There is no time to eat, drink, or sleep… but there is time to play too many rounds of Game Pigeon…
7. Packing
You pack prematurely in hopes that if all of your stuff is packed up, the week will go by more quickly. Packing is your way of procrastinating while also feeling productive.
8. Test Time
The moment you’ve been preparing for. You sit there PRAYING that, the God you have just studied about (all night) for your theology exam, does not let your exhaustion cause all of that studying to slowly leak from your memory as soon as the test is in front of you. You try to get the test over with as quickly as possible while still making sure you do well on it. When you are finished, you don’t even care if you have to do the awkward, “I’m the first one done, I’m handing the test in and leaving first” walk of shame, you just get the hell out of there.
9. Post Tests
You slowly make your way to your dorm, your soul a little bit destroyed from the exam. You open the door and when your roommate asks “How did it go?!”, the only thing you can do is let out a huge sigh and collapse onto the floor. After your roommate gives you a nice little motivational speech and a pat on the back, you get up and make your way over to your bed. You lay there for far too long, physically and mentally drained. Your brain BEGGING you to do nothing but sleep. At this point, to answer the question, you do not care how the hell you did on that test. All you care about is that you know you studied and prepared for it and that it is OVER.
10. Heading Home
You get the call from your dad that he has just parked and you start beaming with excitement. This is the moment you have been looking forward to all week, the end is truly finally here. You force your two best friends into helping take several trips to the car with you... because you packed THAT much (over packing is never a bad thing, you will never forget a thing). After everything is finally in the car and your dad cracks a few jokes about whether or not you're actually coming back next semester, it is time to say goodbye. You give your best friends the biggest hugs and it finally hits you how sad you are to be leaving. Two months is a long time to be away from the charming campus that you now call home, and from the beautiful, amazing people who have gotten so close to during first semester. After your goodbyes, you get in the car and you can finally breathe. You did it. You survived semester one! You start to doze off with a sound mind, knowing you have no school work for seven weeks. You can now sleep like a baby all the way back to your beloved hometown.
