Editorial:
Procrastination is a disease

By Katie Schleiss
Editor in Chief

Every year since junior high, I have made myself the same resolution at the beginning of the school year. Not surprisingly, every year it fails, with almost the same degree of certainty as a half-hearted New Year’s resolution. “This is the year I stop procrastinating.” As a brand new school year approaches and the possibilities for undertaking resolutions and pledges arrive, it seems almost every student has at least some sort of plan for making themselves into a “super-student,” someone who answers every single homework question, double and triple checks their work, studies reverently for even the tiniest pop quiz, and, most noticeably, finally resolves to end their marathon streak of procrastination.

I never really noticed I had such a problem with procrastination until I came to college. All throughout high school, I always did my work reasonably early and turned it in on time. Then, when I applied for PSEO my junior year and came to NCC that spring semester, it all went downhill.

Of course, it didn’t go downhill overnight. I remember the first day of class. It was 7 a.m. and I had signed up for Freshman English Composition. As the class learned about when each paper would be due and what we were supposed to write about, the teacher seemed to be a strict enforcer of deadlines and told the class that points were deducted for work that was turned in late.

Of course, this was a different story than the actual policy in the classroom. As the deadline for the first paper approached, the nonchalant attitude of the class was exceptionally infectious and it seemed no one really cared about turning in their paper.

This is where my yearlong battle with procrastination started. I pushed the paper off, not really caring about it until the night before it was due. Suddenly, it was 3 o’clock in the morning and I was staring at a blank screen, finally done writing out my rough draft on notebook paper. I turned the paper in on time, but the situation grew successively worse.

For every subsequent paper, I started later and later. I could feel myself slipping down the slippery slope of procrastination and apathy, but I did nothing to stop it. It didn’t help matters that the aforementioned English teacher had given false pretenses of being a deadline enforcer. The vast percentage of the class had no qualms about turning in a paper two or three days later than assigned, and the teacher was completely open to pushing back a deadline a week or two if the class had any uncertainties about directions or if they simply complained loudly enough.
Finally, as the semester drew to a close and finals were due, the procrastination had reached breaking point. After a semester of putting off any writing until the night before and very early morning the day the paper was due, or even until the next day and emailing the paper to the teacher, I had turned procrastination into an art form. Sitting at my computer during those long, unproductive hours, I did everything I could to put it off just a little but longer.

I watched music videos on Youtube, I went down to the kitchen to make ramen, I decided that the dog really needed a bath, I cleaned my room until it was unrecognizable. After getting the tiniest bit of rough draft writing done, I decided to call it a day and just finish it tomorrow. After all, the teacher was fine with it.

Once you pick procrastinating up, it is a disastrously difficult habit to break. If anyone had a concrete reason for procrastination, it would be an easier problem to solve and everyone would be happier and less stressed. However, the real reason behind this phenomenon still eludes us and students end up becoming stressed out, overworked and filled with resentment towards school.

Why not try and start over this school year so this doesn’t happen to you again? You might be surprised with how much your grades improve and how much less you will stress out over school. At the very least, you will be much more rested.Let’s face it procrastination is a disease.