From the inside looking out

This archived article was written by: David Rawle

Every college student is different: classes, majors, friends, schools, teachers, even how they view the importance of college. Even though everyone is different, we all have a parallel factor. That factor is something that we all have experienced and are guilty of doing more than once. The older we get, the more we do it and the more we do it, the worst it gets. This mysterious idea is procrastination.
There are many different recognizable signs or symptoms that one is a procrastinator. The first is the most obvious, sitting doing nothing. It usually sounds something like this, “I’ll do it later,” or “I have more important stuff to do right now”, or even, “It’ll get done, don’t worry.” These are things we have all said and let’s face it, will continue to say. Why do we do this? Laziness, or we just find it unappealing. It’s not that we are bad students or bad people for that matter. The work needs to be done and we know that, but deep down we’d rather be doing anything else than doing that homework assignment.
A perfect example of this is being overly productive. Now, I know what you are thinking, isn’t procrastination the exact opposite of productivity? Before you jump to that conclusion, think about what you do when you procrastinate. You don’t just ignore your assignment and sit and do absolutely nothing. You do everything else, but the assignment. How many of us sit, rearrange our desk or redo our entire room. Procrastination gives you the feeling that you just can’t work until it’s done. This is a feeling that is familiar to all of us.
Now, with all of this, most of us still manage to get our assignments in on time. This is the favored tool we procrastinators have in our arsenal: the night before cramming session. The biggest problem with this is it’s a high-risk, high-reward tool.
We veteran procrastinators have learned to retain and use these cramming sessions in a way that benefit us. Others, however, have seen how detrimental the down sides to this tool can be. One of these is completely blanking on the answers when presented with a quest. Others include getting your information all mixed up, cramming the wrong material, realizing you left a big mistake in plain sight, or even just it having no effect whatsoever.
Some tips to help you deal with procrastination from Kendra Cherry, who has a Masters of Science in Education, with her primary interest in educational psychology. “First thing that has been recommended which I use personally, is making a list. Start by writing down all the things you need to do. Then list them in order of the most urgent things you need to get done. This helps you see it’s really not that much work. If that still seems like a lot or work, then you can break it down even further. Break it down into more parts, and do little segments at a time so. You’ll begin to make progress and then you can do more every time. It then becomes a habit, and overall life becomes easier,” Cherry stated.
I hope this brought some light onto the subject of procrastination. The risks of forgetting or making the terminus mistake that makes it quite obvious that you did it last minute, ending in a definite course of a failing grade with a side of embarrassment. Some ways to help you handle your homework without procrastinating, then the rewards of pulling it off and the feeling you have afterwards, this is coupled with the high risk of it actually working in the long run. Along with the action of reminding us all, that we do procrastinate no matter how often we try to deny it.