Procrastination Ruins Lives.

You remember in college when you procrastinated every semester until the very end when everything was due? You spent a week, or more, completely stressed out and when it was over you swore you wouldn’t let it happen again. At the beginning of the next semester, you repeated that promise to yourself. This semester, I’ll do all of my reading, take notes in every class, review every weekend and start studying/finishing projects a month in advance. Everything was great until about a month in. You skipped a night’s reading to go to dinner with friends. Had cramps a few nights later, so you gave yourself the night off and ate ice cream in bed while catching up on Gossip Girl. Realized that you could get away with not reading every now and then, so you focused on other things: your boyfriend, blogging, trying to find a summer job. You kept telling yourself you had plenty of time. Until..you didn’t. And there it was, the weekend before exams. You swore you could get everything done. But then your mom plans a family fun day. Your sorors come into town. The NFL draft is on. And next thing you know, it’s 12:23am on Monday morning. You’re staring at half of a paper you should have finished weeks ago. You’ve barely studied. And when you say “barely” you mean it. Oh..and your computer had a meltdown earlier in the day, just to remind you, while you sit at the Apple Genius Bar in complete panic mode, just how dumb you are for waiting this long. You could freak out. You could cry. Or you could make up some terrible lie and attempt to get out of the two exams and two papers that are due tomorrow. But you don’t. You breathe. You think about the amazing weekend you had with your family. And the fact that your brother’s professional football career has begun and you were there to witness it. You think about your boyfriend who doesn’t judge you when you call him complaining about how tired/stressed/hungry/overwhelmed/over it you are…again. You tell yourself that those are the important things in life. And you remember that on Friday at 5pm, you’ll be done and you can spend 3 months doing anything and everything that doesn’t require thinking about school, or law, or juries or content-based vs. content-neutral regulations. And you promise yourself that you’ll never, ever procrastinate again.

Never happened to you? …yeah, me neither.

Tagged as: procrastination, school, studying