Procrastination merges itself into every student’s life at least once in their academic career. We embrace it, joke about it and eventually, we learn to hate it.
I can’t necessarily speak for everyone else, but my procrastinating nature began when I was in high school. Classwork never presented that much of a challenge, so instead of getting it done early, I would just wait until right before it was due to work on it.
Sure, I realized that I couldn’t always put off work, but I figured I would worry about that later.
Those poor work habits did not go away. In fact, I still struggle with putting off school work and projects to this day. For instance, just now I spent about 20 minutes browsing the Internet instead of finishing this column.
You would think that as a senior in college I would have gotten over my procrastinating habits, but I still wait till the last minute to start or finish something almost every single time. I panic up until I have no choice but to work on an assignment and then I end up getting it done relatively quickly.
It creates an incredibly unhealthy habit, but I’m not the only person who suffers from it.
As a chronic procrastinator, much of my time is spent browsing the Internet and scrolling through social media. I see on Facebook, Twitter, Yik Yak and almost every other platform statuses about students putting off their papers, projects, presentations and not really caring until the day before it’s due.
Why do we do this to ourselves?
Simply put, we don’t like doing work. We have things we would rather do, like surf the net and binge watch “House of Cards.”
Sure, ideally we’re supposed to enjoy the kind of work we’re going into, but most of the work we do after we graduate and get into the workforce doesn’t usually consist of writing papers and doing busy work. Naturally, we try to put it off for as long as possible until it’s staring us in the face.
So when some of us hear that we have a paper due in about three weeks, we usually don’t see it as having three weeks to write the paper. Some of us see it as, “I have a little under three weeks before I have to start worrying about this.”
These kind of bad habits worsen when you develop a condition many of us colloquially call senioritis.
Unfortunately, the end of the semester is where you cannot procrastinate when it comes to anything. If you’re anything like me and you’ve been putting off work for a while, get it done as soon as you can.
Take some time to do a little bit of everything. Otherwise it will be 3 a.m. the day everything is due and you’ll be passed out at your laptop.
I’m sincerely hoping that the rest of the semester will bring me the skills I need to stop being such a procrastinator.
But for right now, I won’t worry about that until tomorrow.
KHADIJA DJELLOULI
