There is nothing quite like the sensation of soaring blood pressure and sleep deprivation that college students get in the last two weeks of the semester. While most of us — and I won’t claim all, because that would be stupid — spent the first half of the semester skating by with a funny feeling we should be working a lot harder than we are, we’re suddenly smacked upside the head with the backhand of reality, as if to say, “Surprise! You have finals!”
Like 99.9 percent of the college population, I have a procrastination problem. My work ethic is as such: Put off any actual work for as long as possible, while making myself feel better about it by doing “research” in preparation. And when I say research, I actually mean hitting refresh 15 times every hour on Facebook.
But listen — I’m doing it for the sake of my sanity. That stress is a tricky thing; you’ve got to avoid it when you can.
Professors and prospective employers alike will tell you that procrastination will be the end of you and your future as you know it if you allow it to fester in your schoolwork. What they neglect to tell you, however, is that procrastination is universal — absolutely everyone does it, and those who claim they don’t only say so because they are putting off telling you that they procrastinate.
The art of procrastination gets a bad rap and this needs to change. What other, woefully responsible students fail to realize is that procrastination is not just the inability to do the work, because no matter how long it is put off, the work gets done eventually.
Procrastination can be honed as any other skill can be — and with the right practice, you, too, can be the Master of the Last Minute, the Keeper of the Daunting Deadline.
Get enough practice, and you are pretty much a speed-reading god. Not much else encourages 90 words-per-minute typing speeds quite like the reality of five pages and 30 minutes to go.
And did I mention stress management? It’s no surprise that when a looming next-day due date for your yet-to-be-researched research paper has got your palms sweating, you learn pretty quick how to channel whatever anxious energy you have into a coffee- and M&M-fueled
all-nighter.
Plus, there’s the bonus of improving your ability to stay coherent for an entire day with not so much as 2 hours of sleep. Win-win!
The point is, procrastination is not the success end-all and be-all like we’re all led to believe. Although it does play a part, if you think you’re the last one to get started on an assignment, there is a good chance there is someone who is still sitting on their couch saying, “I feel like there is something important I should be doing right now.”
With procrastination, positivity is key. So, you didn’t start that three-month project until two days before the deadline? No big deal, you didn’t need that sleep anyway.
Karen should be working on a paper, but is writing columns instead. Tell her to knock it off at khewell@asu.edu.
