This is a paper I wrote for a school project last year. The end is a bit fictionalized as I haven't stopped procrastinating. Procrastination is a bit like a drug. It's bad for you, but you can't stop. However, I found the silver lining on my self induced storm cloud. It seems that the bad things in life are more willing to lend you inspiration. Maybe that's why there are so many tortured souls in the writing business. Not that my petty problems really compare to those of Edgar Allen Poe or Sylvia Plath. Although mine may be a bit more relatable to the average angst ridden teen. So, without further ado....
Procrastinating by Micaela Gullick
4:00 A.M. finds me in front of a glowing computer screen yet again. This time I am waiting for inspiration. Everyone else is asleep, reaping the rewards of their wisdom: they don’t procrastinate until the very last minute to get their work done. I take another swig of Coca-Cola to keep me awake; I have sentenced myself to yet another unnecessary all-nighter. The blinking computer cursor, on an otherwise empty screen, reminds me that this paper is due in just a few hours.
That was me last year, just starting to write a paper that was due at 8:00 A.M. That wasn't a one-time thing either. I have been in this situation far too often to count. Even when I was younger I procrastinated. In 4th grade, I didn't start on my science fair project that I had two months to work on, until three days before I had to present it. And, in 6th grade, I would put off doing any math until the wee hours of the night when I had exhausted all other possibilities of entertainment. Wouldn't you think that after all those experiences I would have learned that procrastinating makes things worse? Well, I have finally realized that it is time to break the bonds of the procrastination habit. I am breaking free!
This year, I transferred from regular public school to the K-12 Georgia Cyber Academy – a school where you learn on-line instead of going to a school building every day. In public school, the work tended to be tedious and dull, but was usually not much of a challenge; good grades tended to come with little effort put forth on my part. I rarely ever had a grade below a high B. With the increased work flow and independent nature of online learning I was alarmed when I realized how low my grades had sunk in early October. It jolted me out of my idleness and I decided to put an end to putting things off until last minute. With that in mind, I put some genuine effort into pulling my grades up.
One of the first things I did to stop procrastination, catch up on work I was behind on, and stay focused, was to write out lists of the work I was behind on and the big assignments. I’m a very visual person so seeing everything laid out and organized made it easier for me to figure out what to do next. My next step was to eliminate as many distractions as possible. This meant taking away books, hiding anything with which I could draw or create art, using a computer that blocks websites that I know enticed me away from MY LIST, etc. Then, I began putting my deadlines where I would see them every day so that they wouldn't creep up on me. The most effective step however, was writing out daily to-do lists and getting all of the important assignments done first. The to-do lists helped me visualize what I had accomplished each day which helped keep me positive and putting all of the assignments that were required to pass were prioritized for obvious reasons.
I’m disappointed in myself for letting my procrastinating get so out of control and that it took such a drastic drop in my grades before I saw the need to take action. However, upon reflection, I am very proud that I was able to achieve my goal and that my grades have improved. This experience has taught me that I putting things off only make them worse; a better way to fix the problem is taking the bull by its horns and getting the completing the dirty deed a.k.a “the to-do list”. Now that I know all of this, I am going to utilize it to keep myself from procrastinating and use these strategies to make better use of my time.
