After the opening run of classes and a weekend dominated by debauchery, courses' obligations seem to already be plotting against me as assignments lay untouched until late Sunday night after the newest The West Wing.
The nocturnal hour is only part of my problem, as it seems a family of woodpeckers, ushered in by a nasty head cold, have decided to nest in my ocular cavity.
As I find myself in this precarious position that is so familiar I feel like I've seen it naked, it seems an obligation to pull out my ace in the hole early in the game due to its quickly regained prominence in my life. What am I rambling about? I'm rambling about how I'm about to be rambling about my academic forte: Procrastination.
Each quarter, students sit in classrooms and listen to their professors lecture about not waiting until the last minute to do their work - as they should. Not only does putting things off affect your academic performance, it turns you into a super stressed psychopath that makes a first-year HTC Engineering major look like a fifth-year Coms major (you know, one's real stressed and the other ... ain't).
But regardless of how diligent my instructors are in their quest to keep me on track
it proves futile in the end as I find myself a twisted demon in front of the keyboard trying to concoct the term paper I've had weeks to write. I meant to do it, I swear, it's just that life kind of got in the way. I'm no good at the big picture, only at immediate gratification of my most primitive needs.
I would also argue on behalf of my fellow procrastinators that the cause behind our ill-advised study habits isn't apathy.
We didn't receive Unsatisfactorys in grade school for uses time wisely because we didn't care about learning the multiplication tables and good handwriting (okay, I didn't care about good handwriting), its just who we are. It's in our blood. Some people can say no you guys go ahead to that alcohol giveaway/orgy I've got this paper due in a few weeks to work on and some people simply can't.
It's become easier with years of practice to defend this ... practice, but excuses aside, it really is an academic abomination and one that has managed to become self-sustaining. Because improvement with excuses over the years has been accompanied by improvement in getting things done in a fraction of the time and managing to still receive a decent grade, motivation to correct myself is weakened. It becomes a monster where without the lashing of a deadline's whip, this collegiate pony won't gallop.
Stands have been made before against this bad habit. Agendas purchased, specific hours of the day set aside, an isolated rejection of an invitation to Tony's to watch the Cavaliers play, but it has maintained in perpetuity. Sometimes I wish I'd ended up like our old buddy Chowder freshman year and, after a quarter of consumption that would have killed a horse and having received a GPA that could have been matched by Toby Keith's lyricist, gotten my ass thrown out for a quarter and forced to get my act together.
But alas, it appears I will have to be a big boy and perfect my work habits all on my own.
As a proud quasi-nerd - the quasi is for my own meek self-esteem - I lament about my undesirable study ethics and think of how being more consistent in my school work would have allowed me to absorb more than I feel I have in my three and a half years of classes here.
I took Anthropology 101, but I couldn't name for you half of the monkeys with gripping tails, I can't even remember the word for gripping tails. My academic career is laced with these blackouts and who knows, had I consistently lent each course its weekly eight hours outside of class, I might remember more of the monkeys with gripping tails.
Consider this a cautionary tale, my younger fellow procrastinators. Look at me and see what I have become. A chronic procrastinator, forced to endure the never-ending phone calls from my editor, ally of those damn woodpeckers, asking where the hell my column for the week is.
- Eric Dryden is a senior creative writing major. Send him an e-mail at ed890402@ohiou.edu.
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