Enduring the roller coaster of emotions that are frantically flying inside of your head throughout the grueling, intimidating process of writing your final paper is exhausting. You knew this assignment was coming, so why did you put off writing the paper until the last possible second? Maybe the act of procrastination is actually your greatest motivator for finishing the paper- let's see how well I can truly focus on completing this important paper (that is worth 50 percent of my grade, might I add) with the factor of running time looming over your head. No pressure. Yet, somehow, you eventually pull it off. You buckle down and then write the paper, proofread, and edit. Despite the feelings of success and accomplishment that result from the completion of your assignment, you promise to never allow yourself to be victimized by procrastination again because the last 48 hours have not been enjoyable; even though, deep down inside, you very well know that this will probably happen again. Here are the 12 stages of writing a final paper.
1. Professor assigns the final paper, and it's due in two weeks.
2. You make a schedule to work on the final a little bit for the next 14 days. Look, you are so not a procrastinator.
3. On second thought, since you just created this elaborate schedule, you have technically already given your paper some ounce of your attention today, so you decide to actually begin writing tomorrow.
4. You spend the entirety of day two searching for a topic and then the sources. This is the hardest part, right?
5. Day three...
6. Life gets in the way for the next week as you have other deadlines for projects, tests, quizzes, a social life, netflix, and naps that all take precedence to writing this final. But don't worry, you still have plenty of time to finish (start) the paper.
7. You wake up on Saturday morning and realize that your final is due on Monday, so you decided to dedicate the whole day to paper writing.
8. You are a sentence producing machine. Where has all this motivation been the last few days?
9. As the word count continues to increase, you think about all of the fun things you could be doing instead of sitting here pounding out 20,000 words. Maybe you are a procrastinator?
10. Finally, the rough draft is finished. Oh, look at that...it's time for bed.
11. Last day + rested eyes = proofread, edit, proofread, edit, proofread, edit.
