Procrastination nation

By: Michelle Anstett
Editor-in-Chief

The time has come again, folks. It is once again time for us to put our fabulous college student powers of former procrastination and a renewed sense of urgency to complete all our end-of-semester projects and study for finals.

While everyone makes the mistake of putting things off until the very last, or close to the last, minute, the long strings of late nights and caffeine-induced strokes of brilliance could be easily avoided. Perhaps we could begin to formulate topics and ideas for end-of-semester essays when they are assigned instead of waiting until the night before the paper is due to load up on sugar and coffee and tap out something resembling a good paper.

Instead of staying up for three days in a row during finals week, gluing photographs to posterboard and creating Powerpointless presentations, maybe we could spend some of our online chatting or Facebooking time to start on these projects earlier in the semester.

All those things we do during the semester, such as watching “Grey’s Anatomy” (or the guilty pleasure show of your choice) every week, playing our favorite game on our brand-new Nintendo Wii or obliterating our brain cells in the bars or at the fraternity complex could be put off occasionally until the end of the semester. If we would eek out one hour per day of our “free time” to work on those long-term projects, think of how much time would be left over at the end of the semester.

Instead of panicking in the last few weeks of every semester, making the impending holiday season even more stressful, we could be relaxing while laughing at others who are shaking with caffeine fits and sleep deprivation. We could be watching those episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy” that we taped earlier in the year while we were in the library studying. We could be enjoying the new version of “Zelda” with our handy Wii remote (provided we don’t throw it out our dorm room window and have to pay exorbitant fees for repairs) instead of surrounding ourselves with piles of paper and books trying to cram that last nugget of information into our already-fried brains.

I know this is not going to change everyone’s habits. That’s unrealistic. All I’m saying is, that with a little bit of planning, we could avoid all the headaches, smoke breaks and freak-outs which inevitably come with finals week.