10:16 a.m. Odyssey article to be written for a 12 p.m. deadline. I’m sitting in a Starbucks in Ithaca with Cornell students working fervently around me. It’s been 15 minutes since I finished my coffee and I’m still waiting for the caffeine to knock the sense of urgency and alertness into me. I need to get this done. The sun is out; Ithaca is as beautiful as ever, waiting to be explored. If only I had thought well ahead in time to realize that I probably wouldn’t get time to work while visiting my best friend in Cornell. If only.
Whiling away time till I absolutely have to start working and stressing under the workload at the last moment is a routine for me. Each time I delay the work till the very end, I always wonder how I ever managed to get any previous assignments done. Till now, I have mostly managed to get work done under the wire, I’ll admit there have been few occasions where completing the work required me to skip classes or feign sickness. It is ironic that this perpetual process of procrastination precedes elaborate planning and to-do lists for every assignment. However, distractions are plentiful and I seem to consciously make no effort to avoid them, making my plans futile.
This practice, unfortunately constant in my life, has yielded mostly satisfactory results in academics. Perhaps the edge of working at the very last moment combined with the stress allows my mind to produce ideas that I would never consider days in advance of the due date, when I have the leisure to overthink that idea and lose its originality. It is a type of gamble since it is just as possible for my work to turn out unoriginal, resulting from the lack of attention given to it at the last moment. Is the quality of one’s work merely depended upon chance in that case? (I may have jinxed mine by writing this.)
Procrastination has been synonymous with me since I can remember. I guess it’s even a major part of the college experience. For the creative fields like arts and writing, it may even be a necessity at times. The ideas that pop up in our minds and our thoughts while creating that art of work are in the rawest, most unique form and tend not to be influenced by any external forces.
Working days before the deadline gives one control to change, edit, revise to perfection but maybe perfection is overrated sometimes. Sometimes, the unedited work creates more impact because it mirrors one’s unconscious thoughts that weren’t even known to oneself before. It might seem like an illogical recommendation at first but I promise it can have positive effects on the quality of work one produces. Procrastination has worked in my favor till now but I wonder for how long?
