Emma Hutchins
Opinions Editor
2:05pm: Time, glorious time! Feel inspired by quotes like “The world is your oyster.” Smell the flowers, breathe the air, you are young!
2:30-4:00pm: This is when normal people might have an extracurricular activity. Perhaps you do a sport? Maybe you have a job, or participate in a club – AKA you’re a contributing member of society, while beefing up that college application. However, if you were like me over the winter you may opt to make this time slot interchangeable with “eat cookies and read magazines time.”
5:00pm: This hour basically doesn’t exist. If it does, it shall not be used for academic purposes. Find some alternative procrastinatory activity. Favorite pastimes include contemplating homework assignments you have, but stopping short of starting (this is half the battle, right?), and browsing the ever-popular Facebook.
6:00pm: Decide that if you can’t finish your homework, you’ll at least try to look hot for the looming bikini season (have a brief moment of self-hate from the cookies you ate between 2:30-4). Make plans to go to the YMCA. Drive to the YMCA. Go up the stairs in the YMCA, and look into the abyss of body image problems manifested on treadmills and elliptical machines. Realize treadmills are for squares, and instead join the next “group fitness” class. If it is spinning or abs class: immediately regret it. You will be surrounded by sick, masochistic middle-aged people who bring their own sweat towels, and who may or may not shop at Whole Foods. Be particularly cautious of ones who use words like “chai” or “detox.” Pray for at least one absurdly out of shape patron, as to divert negative attention away from your inadequacies. Feel young, but not in the good 2:05pm way.
7:30pm: Feeding time, round deux.
8:00-11:59pm: The honeymoon period. It’s getting later, but the pressure is not really registering. Take advantage of being a child of the technology age – Instant Message, text, watch TV, browse whiney blogs, read the news online, check your email, watch CollegeHumor for 1.5 hours more than anticipated, find an unknown artist on YouTube and feel smug about it, etcetera. Also, Facebook. Yeah, that’s a biggie.
12:00am: Welcome to the anti-meridiem, my friend. This is equivalent to the midlife crisis of the all-nighter. The assignment is due today. Consider your caffeine options at this point. Wonder how you got here, and ponder the metaphysical. Make a subtle reference to the time change in an IM conversation, and watch the other person sign off. Feel lonely. Homework begins: now.
1:30am: Look over at your pet sleeping and be oddly jealous of their relative idleness and peaceful demeanor for a second, before realizing that you’re being creepy. Get back to work.
3:00am: Have the alarming realization that the only people left on AIM are your old friends who moved abroad and are in a different time zone and “Bek.” Consequently have a mild aneurysm.
3:17am: Feel a spontaneous eye twitch coming on. Perhaps become light-headed. Delirium is setting in.
3:30am: Resign. A valiant effort! Disregard the blatant content errors and rampant red squiggles in Microsoft Word. Convince yourself that you can finish anything leftover during a free (later it will be discovered that you actually have health or P.E., but for now, let it go. The bed awaits.)
6:30am: Insert Charlie-Sheen-like-rant-directed-at-the-alarm-clock-gods. Stumble out of bed, while trying to avoid all mirrors, because at this point the lack of ‘beauty sleep’ is devastatingly obvious. (read: your skin is worse than a rebel outbreak in Egypt, and your eyes look like they’ve been attacked by Taylor Momsen’s make-up artist…not good, not good.)
7:30am: Repeat. Lolz. Such is the life of a student. Optional: Make dramatic entrance into class making sure to look particularly unappealing, maybe even sniffle a little, alluding to the fact that you comprised your health for the sake of intellectual pursuit. Hope in vain that your teacher will feel a pang of guilt for assigning such a life-ruining assignment.
This reminds me of my own pattern for writing a paper in college, though without Microsoft Word, and with some different froms of procrastination. A certain amount of research and pondering went into the procrastination over the length of the assignment, but knowing what to say about it all and how to say it wasn’t there yet. The end of the scenario, which involved no sleep at all went something like:
5:00am: Desperately tired, become resigned to failure. Contemplate future of hopeless humiliation and no college degree. Truly give up.
5:01-5:30am: Wallow in despair, but continue to try.
5:31am: Break through, brilliant idea. Bask in light, filled with excitement, electric with possibilities.
5:32-7:45am: Ideas are flowing. Write brilliant, cohesive paper, long on original ideas, supported minimally by research.
7:46-8:33am: Print first draft and travel to class. (This is the late eighties. If there’s printing, the whole scenario is taking place in a campus computer center. There was no computer or printer at home. Handwritten papers were sometimes accepted.)
8:34am: Arrive only minutes late and submit the paper.
In spite of the moments of feeling brilliant, it was a miserable way to live. I’m not sure I could have done differently.