Everyone procrastinates sometimes. Some of us are chronic procrastinators. We put off tasks that we really don’t want to do until the last minute. While I am good most of the time, I like to put off things from time to time. After many incidents of leaving something until the night before it’s due, I discovered that procrastination has seven stages, much like grief. There is a process that your mind goes through before you eventually give in and do whatever it is you really don’t want to do.

1. Shock or disbelief

It’s the week that your project is due and you can’t believe that the whole semester went by and you haven’t started it. There is no way the semester could go that fast, right?

2. Denial

You decide to ignore the project because it’s too much to handle and do anything else possible. Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, they are all right there at your fingertips, waiting to be used to endless distraction. Don’t worry, you tell yourself, there is always more time.

3. Anger

What am I doing? You yell at yourself as you lay in your bed, ten episodes deep into Parks and Rec, which you have seen three times already. You are enraged that you could be so stupid to put off this important project until today. Closing Netflix, you began to work on anything that resembles your project.

4. Bargaining

After blasting through your project for an hour, you are tired and weak. You would do anything, anything at all, for this project to be done. Give up the internet, give up chocolate, sell your left kidney, anything.

5. Guilt

A flood of guilt washes through you. It is all your fault. If you hadn’t procrastinated you wouldn’t be in this situation. If you hadn’t stayed up to midnight stalking an ex’s girlfriend, you wouldn’t be risking your entire GPA.

6. Depression

You lay in your bed under your covers because you just can’t do this. This project is too big and you just don’t have enough time. Might as well become a blanket burrito for the rest of your life.

7. Acceptance

You have a sudden realization that no matter what, you have to do this. You have no choice. Still wrapped in your burrito, you crawl to your laptop, ready to be up all night.