It’s bound to happen at least once, if not fifty times in your college career: you will put off your essay until the eleventh hour, and you will hate yourself for it. Fear not! You are far from the first person to end up in this position. I am your voice of reason, here to lead you through this difficult time.

Step 1: Panic

This is a necessary part of the process. One must thoroughly experience these upsetting emotions in order to release them. Allow yourself 5 or 10 minutes to sigh, head in hands, as you envision the doomed future your lazy self is headed toward once you fail this paper. Naturally, your grief will turn to acceptance, and you will be ready to take on this essay.

Step 2: Energize

Pound that coffee, tea, or other caffeinator of choice. Eat a banana. Do jumping-jacks. Blast your token “get hyped” song. Whatever gets you going!

Step 3: Play with Formatting

So you don’t know the first thing about this book you were supposed to read, let alone the themes that you are supposed to spend 5 pages dissecting. It’s all good! Let’s focus on what you do know (hopefully): your name, your professor’s name, your class name, and the date. Get that heading up there, double space, and throw in a temporary title. With a nicely formatted header, you will feel some semblance of progress.

Step 4: Outline

Whatever the topic is, write down all your ideas, your friends' ideas, and the ideas you got off a Yahoo Answers comment from 2009. Writing at random like this, without the pressure of using proper grammar or spelling just yet, can help you pin down a thesis and generate arguments. Once you feel like you’ve sufficiently brainstormed, separate your points and group together any that seem similar. Boom: instant paragraphs!

Step 5: Structure

Put your paragraphs in an order that makes some sort of sense, add transitions, and voila, you’re probably already ¾ done!

Step 6: Clean Up

Look, you put this essay off 'til the last minute. You’ve come to terms with the possibility that you might get a bad grade. But if you’re going down, you’re going down with dignity! Make this paper look and sound as pretty as possible. Read it through multiple times out loud. Let yourself hear any grammar errors or run-on sentences. Have someone else read it and give you suggestions. Don’t lose points for improper formatting or grammar mistakes!

Step 7: Submit

Turn in that paper and move on with your life. Don’t beat yourself up over this. You've learned from your mistakes--next time, you’ll start sooner. Maybe.