Procrastination (noun): 1. The act or habit of procrastinating, or putting off or delaying, especially something requiring immediate attention.
As a college student who balances two majors, a pre-law certificate, division one lacrosse, clubs/organizations on campus and a social life, I hardly find time to squeeze in anything else. With my busy schedule and a lack of time, I constantly am trying to cram seven hours of homework into a two hour time slot. Although I can try to attribute my procrastination level to the lack of time I have, I have come to terms that my easily-distracted persona is completely my fault.
We have all been there.
You get a ten page research paper assigned to you three weeks before it is due. You look at the due date and think it is a millennium away. So what do you do? You focus on cramming all your short-term assignments in and studying for your test tomorrow without thinking twice about the monster essay that you’ll have to tackle within a few weeks. After you finish all those short term assignments and your test the next day, you become tired. So you decide to reward yourself with a well-deserved nap. That monster is at the back of your brain and at the bottom of your responsibility checklist, so you don’t think twice about it.
This routine continues for the next three weeks leading up to the research assignment due date. You cram short-term assignments in and study for your next-day tests/quizzes while at the same time, putting off the big assignment. The monster paper is due on a Thursday of your Tuesday/Thursday British Literature class. That Tuesday, you walk into class thinking that you’ll be able to finally have a nap after for the first time in two weeks. But that all changes when your professor excitedly announces, “I am greedily looking forward to reading all of your research essays on Thursday!”
You sit up straight.
Your mouth becomes dry.
A lump forms in your throat because you think that you may breakout sobbing.
A giant dark cloud immerses you.
And finally, 150 pounds of responsibility falls onto your shoulders.
You think to yourself, “How could I have forgotten about it?! I had three weeks to do it!”
But then after 10 minutes of panicking, you start cracking up laughing because this could not be a more typical circumstance for you. In fact, this mid-class-two-days-before-something-is-due-realization happens almost weekly for you. It’s occurred almost weekly since middle school, but you accept it. You pull two all-nighters, drink a combined nine cups of coffee in 48 hours, and print the paper out five minutes before your Thursday class begins.
Yet, why do those who procrastinate never learn their lesson? Why do we always cram last minute when we know very well how much stress, anxiety and franticness it will cause us in the end?
The answer is simple. It is because we know deep down inside that no matter how much we are pressed for time, we will get that assignment done and in by the deadline. Thus, we never learn our lesson because we know we can still succeed even if we leave our priorities for the last second.I hope that in the future I can write an article titled, "How I Overcame Procrastination and Learned to Prioritize My Life." But for now, I can only accept that I have a procrastination problem and I'll work towards ways to improve my time-management skills.
