By Marrissa Ballard | Managing Editor
Do the laundry that’s been sitting in your hamper for a week, re-organize and color-code your post-it notes, or maybe watch that new series that just came to Netflix. These are some of the things you could do to put off your work.
Everyone is familiar with the word “procrastination.” If you ask a student about their homework or assignments, many times you will get the response that they haven’t started yet. Even though plenty of teachers, parents, and even other students will advise them against procrastinating, they can never quite kick the habit.
Maybe you are one such procrastinator.
If you are, there’s no need to feel ashamed or alone. In fact, according to a study done by Piers Steel, a psychologist at the University of Calgary, 80 to 95 percent of college students procrastinate, especially with their schoolwork.
Laura Kcira-Barry, the Learning Services and Disability Specialist at the Academic Center for Excellence, is a resource for the procrastinators on campus. When stressed and teary-eyed students enter her office, the first thing she tells them is to start using to-do lists and weekly planners. “Planning out every single thing is key,” Kcira-Barry stated.
Kcira-Barry believes that one of the main reasons students procrastinate is because their assignments seem overwhelming and unmanageable. The students push their work off until the last minute and then end up in a sobbing panic in Kcira-Barry’s office.
“Rarely does anything positive result from procrastination,” she stated. The emotions that the students experience—anxiety, frustration, and panic—are extremely negative and outweigh any positive outcomes. Eventually the assignment gets done, but the students have put themselves through enormous amounts of stress in the process.
The biggest and most important advice that Kcira-Barry has to offer is that students should always pull back and look at the “big picture” so they can break assignments up into smaller increments. She thinks that breaking the larger assignments into smaller pieces can help alleviate some of the stress and frustration that students feel when looking ahead to future projects. “If you plan for it, and you start working on it in advance, it could be 15 minutes a day as opposed to six solid hours with no sleep,” Kcira-Barry stated.
The Academic Center for Excellence offers many tips and programs to help students avoid procrastination. Many of the workshops focus on helping students with tactics like planning and time-management.
Ryan Colwell, an English Lit major and resident procrastinator at Salve, admitted that time-management is one of his major weaknesses. “I’m really bad with budgeting, planning, and managing anything,” Colwell said.
Colwell also cited a lack of motivation as a reason for his procrastination. Like many other procrastinators, Colwell gets his motivation from waiting until he has no time to procrastinate and is forced to start working.
Though Colwell procrastinates, often until the very last minute, he does think about his prompts and assignments throughout the week. He often mentally writes or outlines them. When he finally sits down to actually start the assignment, he already has a basic idea of what he will write.
Colwell doesn’t think his procrastination has negative effects. “If I can freak out for like two hours, it’s worth being able to chill out the rest of the time,” Colwell said. “But I still get good grades on my assignments, usually ‘A’s or ‘B’s.”
Colwell is also one of those people that works best under pressure, which makes him a successful procrastinator. “One time I finished a two-page paper in 20 minutes,” Ryan said. “But I still got a good grade on it.”
Though Colwell succeeds despite his procrastination habit, he wouldn’t recommend the practice to anyone else. However, he also understands that not every student can procrastinate and still succeed. “You have to know yourself, and know how long it takes you to get work done,” Colwell said.
While students may think that a professor can’t tell if they’ve procrastinated, professors will tell you otherwise. Dr. Gamache-Griffiths, an adjunct professor in the Political Science department, says that she can usually pick out the procrastinators in her class. The main indicators of a procrastinator, according to Gamache-Griffiths, are “poor work product” and late responses.
Gamache-Griffiths believes there is a distinct correlation between procrastination and student behavior and participating during class. Students who do not do the homework or read are often much more reluctant to speak during class.
The short term effects of procrastination, like poor grades and stress, are negative in themselves. However, Gamache-Griffiths also believes that there are long term effects that the students are not aware of. “It negatively affects their whole college experience,” she stated. “And then it becomes a habit, and follows them into adulthood.”
However, many students don’t change their habit, even after an assignment disaster. “The change has to come from the student,” Gamache-Griffiths stated. “We can try to help them all they want, even point out their habit and its effects, but they have to be the ones to reform.”
