Putting play ahead of work
Fall semester is in full swing. As midterms grow closer, some students are under pressure trying to stay afloat with work loads. While homework has and always will be typical of college, some students are well-practiced in their tendency to procrastinate.
“I’m a big time procrastinator,” said Logan Brown, a sophomore majoring in finance. “I procrastinate to the point of skipping class to do homework for another class. I would rather pull weeds than do homework – I even did that last week.”
Brown said he procrastinates because he is always able to find more enjoyable activities to participate in. He said in spite of having seen the negative effects in his studies, as long as he doesn’t see a significant decline in his grades, he will continue procrastinating.
“I’m a master of procrastination,” said Zach Yates, a sophomore majoring business administration. “Whatever I want to do most at the time is what I do, even if it’s not necessarily the most important thing for me to be doing. I wait until it is absolutely necessary, but I do well under pressure.”
Some students get creative in their methods of procrastination for reasons such as the difficulty of a task, a lack of time or even a lack of necessary skills. Some go to great lengths to delay attending to things they need to get done.
“I would rather scrub the bathtub than do homework sometimes,” said Jana Keller, a senior majoring in FCHD. “This morning I was like, ‘I should work on my stats homeworks, but I’ll just scrub the bathtub instead.’ It’s not like I like scrubbing the bathtub, but then I’m not feeling bad about not doing anything when I need to do my homework.”
Jami Garvin, a junior majoring in communication disorders, said she procrastinates getting ready for bed and will put it off to the point of not feeling well.
“I hate getting ready for bed so bad that I’ll stay up until 2 a.m. doing nothing until I feel so sick that I have to go to bed,” Garvin said. “I just put it off the whole time. I’ll look at workouts that I’ll probably never do. I’ll set out an outfit. I’ll clean my room. I’ll look at old pictures. I’ll try new hairstyles. I’ll pluck my eyebrows. I’ll do anything besides going to bed, and that’s not even mentioning Instagram or Facebook.”
According to Psychology Today Magazine, 20 percent of people chronically avoid difficult tasks and deliberately look for distractions. The magazine said procrastination in large part reflects a person’s struggle with self-control as well as their inability to accurately predict how they’ll feel tomorrow or the next day.
With access to social networking sites, video games, movies and other forms of entertainment, some struggle with self-discipline in moments of scholastic necessity.
“In the future, it’s always going to be a great day,” said Yates. “It’s always going to be a good time. It’s always perfect and peachy and you will have plenty of time to get things done. Then all of a sudden the future is now the present, and it just so happens that its not a good time. It’s not as perfect and peachy as you thought it would be. Something always comes up or goes wrong and you don’t have as much time as you thought.”
Yates said due to the the difficulty of gauging future feelings and attitudes, it is better to get things done in the present.
“You might as well just do it now,” he said. “That future day when things slow down and you have all the time to do what you want to do is never going to come. You’ve got to do it here and now.”
Students agree they shouldn’t put things off and if they were to practice more self discipline, they would also see improvements in their grades.
“If I didn’t procrastinate I would do better in my studies,” said undeclared freshman Alayna Ballard. “I wouldn’t be so stressed out all the time. I’d be able to put more thought into the work I do and I’d feel better about it. If I put something off until the last minute I’m stressed out even after I turn it in because I’m not sure if I’ll do well on it.”
According to a discussion of procrastination at California Polytechnic State University through their Student Academic Services, there are four steps to overcoming procrastination. The first step involves the realization that an activity is being delayed unnecessarily. After that realization is made, the reasons for putting off a given activity must be identified. Once those reasons for delay are discovered, they can be disputed and overcome. The last step is to begin the task.
“Just do it,” said Keller. “It’s just the idea of starting that’s daunting. As soon as you are actually doing it, and especially when you’re done, it’s really not that bad.”
– cale.w.p@aggiemail.usu.edu