In honor of finals' week (at least for my Transylvania friends), I'd like to talk about procrastination (even though you probably could've used this a lot more last week when all the papers were due...
Having graduated an accomplished procrastinator myself, I have a lot of experience with the feelings associated with it, the problems it causes, the choices you make during, and the benefits of (and against) procrastinating.
There are plenty of reasons that we procrastinate.
1. Not excited about whatever it is we're procrastinating.
2. There are more interesting things right in front of you.
3. Out of energy after a hard semester- intellectually exhausted.
4. Fear of confrontation, progression, or change itself.
5. Depression (a combination of 3/4).
6. Denial that the work exists.
And many others.
Procrastination is a tricky issue because it's so self-perpetuating. It's very easy to slip into a loop of procrastination despite how easy it is to budget time each day between the start of a project and the end.
Yet, instead of working an hour a day for a week, we cram seven hours into a single night, whereby we're too stressed and exhausted to do a good job on the project anyway.
It's a super common problem caused the open-ended nature of assignments with the anxiety of long-term thoughts and goals.
People don't like thinking months in advance typically. It's stressful and anxiety-provoking. It's far easier, emotionally, to put something away in the corner of your mind until it's more urgent.
A single procrastinated project doesn't typically cause more than a mild amount of stress. However, as any college student will tell you, if you procrastinate two or three papers at once, the stress piles up exponentially. Additionally, exams can often occur around the due dates for some projects giving an added element of frustration and helplessness.
While the first reaction might be to blame the professor for making a term paper due the same time as every other term paper ever (a valid criticism) along with most exams, the professor is in a lose-lose situation.
Their two easiest options are to assign something at the beginning of the semester due at the end of the semester in order to give you both adequate time to complete it and the convenience of doing the work when you have the spare time. (What they do now)
OR
Assign a long paper due a week or two after assigning it so that it no longer falls in line with most other papers and typically fewer tests. However, the second option removes the option of doing the work strictly when you have free time and forces you into a deadline that you may legitimately have difficulty with. The added bonus is that it's far more difficult to procrastinate a project due the same week it was assigned.
In either circumstance, the students have a valid complaint.
Either the paper is due in a fashion that most people aren't comfortable working with (open-ended working times and long-term planning, due at the same time as many other similar projects), or the paper is due in a fashion that gives you limited flexibility and less time for completion.
It's far easier to assign a project due in the first method, so a professor doesn't have to keep up with exceptions or special requests and the professor has an out by being able to blame the students for procrastinating in the first place.
Can't really blame them for that choice.
It's really a systemic problem, wouldn't you say?
Here we are in an education system that stresses deadlines and timing. Strict tardy policies, focus on punctuality, and everything's compartmentalized in our daily routine.
We're in this system for 12+ years before going on to college.
Where once our longest project deadline was typically a week, we're suddenly given months to complete assignments. The system doesn't train us to utilize time-management techniques, but then it expects us to utilize them properly?
And before it's brought up, yes, many schools will often have a lesson with tips and tricks on time management, but that's the equivalent to cramming for an exam in a class you never showed up for.
If you don't ever have to use time-management techniques in 12 years of schooling, what lesson have you learned? That time-management isn't very important or useful. It's hard to unlearn that. So while it would be wrong for students to respond angrily to a professor's choice of assignment dating, it's equally wrong to insinuate that a student is simply lazy of their own accord.
Let's frame this another way-
You go your whole life through the school system and the culture we have, and when you finally get to college, you're suddenly graded on your ability to avoid gender norms a few times every semester.
Can you imagine? You go your whole life learning that skirts are for girls and jeans are for boys and then you're expected to suddenly shed those ingrained cultural norms? Imagine that with every gender norm in your life. The way you sit, the way you dress, the way you walk, talk, think, who you associate with, your hobbies- it's mind-numbing to think that you could just stop all the behavior you learned throughout your life up to that point.
And yet, that's what we're expected to do when we're told out of the blue that assignment due dates are effectively open-ended like that.
So, we'd be more comfortable with papers due a week from their assignment, but it might cause more unavoidable conflicts and problems.
Contrarily, we're less comfortable with papers due at the end of a semester, but they give us more maneuverability on how we work on them.
College has enough going on that the maneuverability is typically more useful to us than the comfort, but without the comfort, we don't use the maneuverability, lending this style to causing the standard end-of-the-semester panic attacks.
What do?
There's not a lot you can do except adapt (or pitch ideas to professors).
Learning time management is annoying and difficult.
Set alarms. Lots of alarms. Use incentives. Use the buddy system to ensure that you and a friend are forcing each other to do work in a timely fashion.
However, ultimately if you do procrastinate, there's one major thing to remember:
Don't panic, take deep breaths, and try to ignore the sense of impending doom- instead, collect yourself and evaluate the situation. Are you going to almost certainly be unable to complete the assignment by its due date for any reason? If so, immediately notify your professor and don't lie.
Yes, they'll be annoyed, but you get some respect for honesty and many professors are willing to work with you if you show that you're putting in the effort.
Maybe ask if you can send in an incomplete draft on the due date to show your progress while sending in the completed assignment a day or two later.
Avoid taking "leisure" time during this crisis. What I mean by "leisure time" is any activity that is not conducive to work or concentration. You can take breaks where you clear your mind (we'll come back to this) or read related articles, but avoid sitting down to watch TV.
Deep breaths, holy shit, deep breaths. Shallow breathing reduces oxygen to your brain, preventing you from using the full extent of your knowledge and intellectual capabilities in your project. Deep breaths help to clear the clogged pathways in your mind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZJzrEJgKxU&t=1m19s
Watch this clip through 2:00. It's the explanation for chakras in Avatar: The Last Airbender, but it succinctly applies to stress as well.
Stress and panic tends to have a spiraling effect. If you have stress, it causes panic. If you panic, you get stressed, ad nauseum. It's difficult, but breaking this spiral is essential to prevent a full-blown panic attack.
It seems counter-intuitive, but the best way to break this cycle is to stop focusing on the stress-inducing work (even if it needs done ASAP). To do this, you must focus on something else while breathing as deeply as you can (in through the nose and out through the mouth, for those inexperienced with healthy breathing techniques).
For my part, I discovered Tai-Chi at Transy my sophomore year. It taught both consistent/deep breathing and how to focus on something else for about a half hour at a time. By focusing on the way that your body moves and flows while performing the Tai-Chi movements, you're forced to keep sensory focus on new data constantly (because your body rarely stays perfectly still during the movements). This, in turn, allows you to keep your mind off of the stress-inducing work while you breathe. The end result is that your mind becomes significantly more clear at the end of the exercise.
With a clear mind, you can return to work with a more straightforward grasp of what you need to do and how you need to do it.
Don't be afraid to take one of these breaks when everything seems to be closing in on you. It's healthy and productive towards finishing your work.
(an hour of panicked breathing and harried writing will come out muddled and of low quality)
(a half hour of the previous exercise will leave you capable of writing with far more skill and clarity for several hours while also removing [or limiting] the inhibition that is stress and panic)
Remember not to panic. Panic is the enemy that will suck valuable time, energy, focus, and ability during a time when you need it most. Panicking will not solve anything and will only make you more miserable. While it's difficult to fight it, the exercises above should help.
(NOTE: Doing an exercise like the one I mentioned on a weekly basis will help you perfect it in your time of need, allowing it to come more easily to you despite the panic. Similarly, your ability to breathe deeply will be enhanced with practice, allowing for more clearing of the clogged "chakras.")
This advice does not strictly translate into non-school related endeavors, but the exercises are good for any instance of panic and stress that you will ever have. So long as you have the time to stop, step back, and breathe for a few minutes, problems will always be easier to deal with.
Good luck! (Now that you're mostly done)
-
Waddles
No comments:
Post a Comment