Finals are upon us at Oregon State University. Of course, I'm over here procrastinating studying for finals by writing an article about procrastinating. It's just that no matter what, every term finals week has me feeling like this:
I've outlined the five stages of finals week procrastination for those of us who are definitely not on our A-game.
Stage one: Regretting the fact that you slacked off all term.
During this stage, you aren't actually studying. In fact, you haven't even checked out your study guide or begun your final project. Instead, you are reliving your term and cringing at all the Netflix binges, late-night McDonald's runs, and other nonsense that prevented you from catching up on reading, memorizing the terms and doing anything academia-related. As you remember all of those missed opportunities to study, you begin to hate yourself.
Stage two: Starting to consider your locations for studying.
You are in full-blown self-hatred mode, and you're just trying to find a place that isn't packed to study. You consider waking up with the sunrise to find a spot in the library, and then you immediately consider just showing up around 10 a.m. and walking around aimlessly for an hour waiting to find a spot. During this stage, you also consider other prime locations like coffee houses and study rooms on campus. Unfortunately for you, all of these locations are going to be loaded with stressed out (read: rabid) students. Finding a good study spot on finals week is the college equivalent of Black Friday, every day. Every well-known spot (on and off campus) looks like this every morning:
Stage three: Sitting down and complaining about how much work you have to do.
You've finally found somewhere to study/complete your project, and before you even open your backpack you start to complain -- especially to your non-procrastinator friends. Your listing everything you're pretty sure you need to have done in a matter of hours, and your friends just don't care. Suddenly, it becomes a contest and you find yourself exaggerating your work in a pathetic attempt to hide the fact that you've had at least a week to do this. At this point, the people around you are glaring at you like this:
Stage four: Realizing what you have to do, and panicking.
You hesitantly open the study guide, prompt or project rubric and nearly die of a heart attack on the spot. You have to memorize an entire textbook; you need a million expert sources; you have to write ten pages, single-spaced. You briefly consider faking a family emergency, and you are imagining your entire education falling apart. Before you can even begin, you have a silent panic attack and you have to give yourself a mini-pep talk so you don't lose it in public.
Stage five: Finally starting to work.
Now that you've overcome your panic attack, you actually start working. At this stage, you're still giving yourself a pep-talk (I can do this; this isn't that bad), and you're starting to regain your confidence. Of course, you're also swearing to yourself that you'll never do this to yourself again. Additionally, true to form, you're spending a lot of time zoning out thinking about how much you don't want to do this.
Happy finals week!
