I’m all for procrastination. I am constantly waiting until the last minute to do my homework. In fact, I firmly believe some of my best work comes from working under extreme stress. Sure, I feel terribly anxious about finishing it, but it usually turns out pretty well.

However, I have recently discovered that this is not the best approach in college, when your grades actually matter, and your teachers will be able to tell how much time you put into your work. I recently had an essay that was due at five o’clock in the evening, and I decided to put it off until the day it was due. I thought about it for several days leading up to the due date, but I never broke out my laptop because I thought I’d have a pretty good idea of what I was going to write about when I got down to it.

I was right about that part: when I sat down at my desk, I wrote a few quick notes about what I wanted to write, and then I got right into it. Unfortunately, I did not consider the fact that I had other obligations throughout the day. I had things going on that took up a couple of hours of my day, cutting a considerable chunk of my focused writing time.

So, around three o’clock, I sat down so I could actually get to work. I was typing furiously, flipping back and forth in my textbook, consulting my notes frequently, and popping peanut M&Ms in my mouth as I went. I had finally reached the perfect writing headspace. But of course, I also failed to consider that technology is never on your side.

At approximately four o’clock, my computer decided to restart and do updates, and of course I hadn’t saved my essay (thank you, autosave feature). It wasn’t a small update, either. It was a “This could take a while. Your computer will restart several times,” update. I’m not going to lie; I almost cried. I was pretty sure my luck had run out and this was how I would die. I imagined my tombstone reading, “Here lies Brittany, died by essay.”

By the time my computer was done updating and I had retrieved my document, it was four fifteen, and I had another commitment I had to attend to. Luckily, this one only took a few minutes, so I arrived back at my room with thirty minutes until the deadline, another full page to write, and a ton of editing to do. I sat down and began writing as fast as I could, not bothering to go back and check things.

Long story short, I turned the essay in at four fifty-seven. It definitely wasn’t my best work, but it could have been a lot worse. I don’t yet know how I did, as I haven’t gotten the results, but I’m hoping my decision to wait until the last minute won’t hurt me too badly. But if it does, at least I (hopefully) will have learned my lesson.

The moral of the story here, kids, is that you should never try to write an essay in eight hours. It can be done, but you really shouldn’t attempt it if you have other obligations within that eight-hour period. I beg of you, just write your paper long before it’s due so you have time to look over it and make sure it isn’t horrible before you turn it in. Trust me: you don’t want to get stuck in the situation I created for myself, because it won’t be fun.