Procrastination

I have two 4-6 page papers for my wisdom lit. class that are due today, or as my classmate Tim pointed out to me yesterday the syllabus says that if they are emailed to the prof. prior to 8am tomorrow they are still considered on time! Thanks for the heads up Tim! I have known about these papers since the beginning of the year. Granted I have had a hefty amount of other school work to get done along the way but over the last few weeks I have actually had some time that could have been dedicated to getting these two papers out of the way...But if I had done that I wouldn't be writing this post now would I?? I think the fact that they are such short papers has lead me to put them off thinking that they'll be a piece of cake and will really only take ma a few hours to write. If I actually sat down and worked on only the paper this might be true but instead I have come up with everything and anything to do instead of working on them! I started the first paper on Friday afternoon. My goal was to have it finished by Saturday afternoon and have the second one well on it's way by Saturday night. I finished the first one this morning. It is currently 7:30 and I have one page written for the second one. Saturday consisted of sitting down to work on it and then turning on the t.v. or sitting down to work on it and checking my email, or sitting down to work on it and then reading random blogs, or sitting down to work on it and then getting up to get something to eat, or sitting down and working on it and then grading Greek quizzes instead, or sitting down and working on it and then going to wash the dishes. Sunday was much of the same. This is why the thing was only finished this morning. Today I has been not nearly as bad as Saturday and Sunday were but I have procrastinated none-the-less...What do you think I'm doing right now??? I think it was Saturday when my procrastination included looking up the word procrastination on Wikipedia. This is what it told me:

Procrastination is the deferment or avoidance of an action or task to a later time and is often linked to perfectionism. For the person procrastinating this may result in stress, a sense of guilt, the loss of productivity, the creation of crisis, and the chagrin of others for not fulfilling one's responsibilities or commitments. While it is normal for individuals to procrastinate to some degree, it becomes a problem when it impedes normal functioning. Chronic procrastination may be a sign of an underlying psychological or physiological disorder.

The thing about procrastination being linked to perfectionism hit home for me. Because I am definitely a perfectionist. I often put off doing something like writing a paper because I worry about being able to do it well. Unfortunately getting good grades is very important to me. But really am I going to care what grade i got in my Greek class five years from now? not likely. Am I going to even care next week after I've graduated? Probably not. But for now when I'm in the middle of it all it matters to me a lot. I don't know why. Or maybe I do but just don't have time to think it through and expand on it right now, come on people I have papers to write. I didn't mention earlier that I have a ten page paper due on Wednesday and a PowerPoint presentation due on Thursday did I? Perfectionism...coming soon in a blog post near you.

The part about procrastination being a sign of an underlying psychological or physiological disorder I'm inclined to ignore because really, how many of you are reading this right now because you're procrastinating from doing something of much more importance than knowing about how I really don't want to write my papers? Come on, be honest now! I agree with those wikipedia folks on the fact that it is normal to procrastinate to some degree. We've already covered that the fact that you are reading this is proof of that. But in the end I will have these papers emailed before 8am tomorrow. Most likely before I go to bed tonight... Because after all I am a perfectionist and it just wouldn't be perfection if I handed something in late now would it??

Now I'm going to go finish that second paper...and you should get back to whatever it is that I've been helping you to put off. Shame on me! ;)