I've Got All the Time in the World

I’m not religious, but I do maintain one religious conviction: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and reading period. Those two glorious weeks in January offer academic salvation for those of us who were too busy (or too lazy) to read (or even to purchase) books during the previous four months. However, in spite of having two entire weeks with no class, and in spite of the frigid weather which discourages us from venturing far from our heaters, we inevitably find ways to waste our time—whether solo or en masse. Such strategies include:

Checking e-mail. Given that it is 3:30 a.m., it is unlikely anyone has written to the compulsive e-mail checker, and yet he staves off work by checking again and again.

The student composes long messages in an attempt to elicit an equally long response and sends them to nearly everyone in his address book. In the worst case scenarios, the student may begin to read his or her spam or e-mail the parents.

Compulsive gym visits. This type of procrastination, while great for your calves, may leave you exhausted and unable to complete work later in the day. Women can typically be found procrastinating on the elliptical, pretending to multi-task by reading magazines like Glamour, Vogue, Cosmo or Teen People. Toting such high-quality publications creates a false sense of productivity, thus lessening the guilt associated with avoiding work. Even if you do poorly on finals, you’re going to be one toned mama.

Grazing in the dining hall. The gym-goer’s worst nightmare, this student eats his or her stress in the name of delaying work. The grazer typically arrives in the dining hall at 5 p.m. and moves from table to table over the next three hours as his friends, acquaintances and total strangers slowly but surely abandon him. The grazer will spend much of the meal with his mouth ajar, cursing his excessive workload, and may grow angry if you interrupt his tirade. He is later spotted hovering over the cream cheese at Brain Break.

Hygienic and cosmetic therapy. Showering, shaving, moisturizing, clipping, plucking, tweezing, waxing, tanning, spraying, cutting, washing—each hygienic and cosmetic directive becomes more important when delaying completion of that final paper. After all, who can write about Kant with uneven brows, dry skin or greasy hair? This method of procrastination often involves trips to CVS to stock up on more chapstick, shaving gel or skin care product.

Procrasturbating. This practice, usually conducted by males, can occur spontaneously at any point during the day and is signaled by the locking of a bedroom door. It is typically conducted alone, though depending on one’s level of openness can be conducted in groups.

Scanning the news. You still can’t identify any of the 120 images for your Literature and Arts final, but you’ve read every editorial in The New York Times, understand the science behind tsunamis, and can name all the cabinet members who resigned from the Bush administration.

Surfing thefacebook.com. After identifying every potential romantic partner in her year and identifying their various class schedules, this student procrastinates even more by establishing groups based on a common name, identity or goal (see the groups My Name is Michael, Gaysia: the 8th Continent, and Students for the Secession of New England). Such procrastination makes students adept at spotting like others: who else would know that a particular passerby also loves Shakira?

Trips to Lamont reading room. It is common knowledge that work cannot be completed here—and yet we go anyway. While students in the basement and upper floors actually write papers and do course reading, students in the reading room divide their time between cruising freshman, catching up with old acquaintances, asking people to turn off their cell phones, answering calls in the stairwell and downloading pornography on wireless. And yes, for all these reasons students are lobbying to keep Lamont open 24 hours a day.

Why do we do it? The psychological explanation suggests that we procrastinate as a means to protect our self-esteem. Procrastination acts as a self-handicapping device whereby we create obstacles to successful and timely completion of work. Certainly, if you do poorly on a paper it is comforting to have an excuse for your failure, namely that you didn’t spend much time on that assignment. Were you to do poorly on a paper you wrote without the delay of procrastination, you might deem yourself mediocre. An alternative explanation is that students procrastinate simply because they can: as academic superstars, they don’t need to utilize all of their time. No matter how you slice it, as long as there is a reading period there will be two extra weeks to procrastinate. The decision to work (or not to work) is yours to make—that is, if you get around to it.

William Lee Adams ’04-’05 is a psychology concentrator in Winthrop House. This is his final column.