Hello, 2015. Goodbye, Procrastination.

When I was in grade 6, I was assigned a project on an endangered animal of my choice. I chose the leatherback sea turtle knowing next to nothing about the animal but I quickly became OBSESSED with it. I got so into my project that after I’d filled out the 1 page of mandatory information, I spent hours combing through the Internet for any additional information I could find. I didn’t sleep much that night. I squeezed my hours of research into 3 pages back and front and stapled them onto my original worksheet, buzzing over all of the fascinating new facts swimming (ha… ha…) around in my mind. Staying up past my 9 pm bedtime with a book and a flashlight under the covers wasn’t unusual (umm… just kidding, I never did that, Mum) but this was the first time that I can remember staying up for school.

Check out this beauty!

Fast forward only a couple of years into the future and staying up late was becoming more and more of a common occurrence. Except now it wasn’t because of an insatiable need to learn more more more but because I had pushed starting my work later and later. 3 PM became 4 PM which turned into 5 PM and suddenly homework didn’t cross my mind until after dinner had been eaten and the dishes cleared away. By the time I was in high school and university, it was known by almost all my friends that I was a final hour kind of worker.

I used to joke that it would take me failing an assignment to shake me of my last minute studying and while that didn’t happen, I did receive a wake-up call last semester that I’m not eager to repeat.

I had a project due for (one of) my very first 3rd year courses. Leading up to the deadline, I kept thinking that everything was under control, which probably should have been my first hint. When it got to the night before the assignment was due and I was actually sitting down to write it, the panic hit. Now, I’m really not prone to stress at all, and so the experience was even more alarming for me. I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing and that there was just so much to do that I would never finish on time. In the end, I finished with literally 5 minutes to spare and ran to class on no sleep whatsoever… not my finest moment. Despite the stress and exhaustion that incident gave me (a decent amount!) I’m glad it happened because of how it forced me to re-evaluate my work habits. Luckily, this was the day before co-curricular days (York’s version of the fall semester reading week) and I got a killer grade so I had recovery time. Still, I was very, very aware of the fact that I can’t expect 3 days of sleeping in after a night of no sleep and I spent the rest of the semester slowly improving my routine.

For a while, I really do believe that what I was doing worked for me. I’m not claiming to be the expert on effective study habits or saying that you should change what you’re doing, but it is really important for me to have evaluated my situation, found a system that wasn’t working and put in an effort to change it. I’m in university and at Glendon because it makes me happy and I want to hold on to that relationship as best I can.

And it has gotten better! Take that, high school friends that have laughed at me every time I’ve sworn I was done with procrastinating (to be fair, this is possibly proclamation #24). But, with you as my witness, I’m hoping this time will be the real deal.

I’m not expecting this to be an immediate change (case in point: my sister has glared at me over the computer screen multiple times to ask, are you procrastinating on your procrastination post?? Little sisters: always keeping you in check). I’ve already seen improvement though from the last month or so of the fall semester where I was making a conscious effort to not overload myself in the final hours and I felt much, much better for it.  

With the new semester (not to mention the new year) here, I feel refreshed and ready to learn. I want to rekindle my love of school and learning and hopefully this puts me on the right track. Wish me luck and check back to make sure I’m resisting the lure of walking around school like a zombie after a night of no sleep.

Wait a minute….