Procrastination is defined in the text as to “delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay.” The lower incentive value of a task causes more people to procrastinate doing it. The book also states that students tend to procrastinate on assignments they find less interesting, students tend to do something else instead (i.e.- socializing). While discussing this topic, the book gives many examples of students and their procrastination habits. I could easily relate this example to myself, being a college student.
In my freshman year of college I had to take a required teaching class. Since I did not plan on being a teacher, I had no interest in the topics we covered. At the end of the semester we had to do a project, which involved doing a presentation to the class and writing a seven page paper on the topic we presented. Even though we were notified about the assignment from the very first day of class, I waited until 11pm the night before to start this assignment. It took me until 2am to finish it. Once I completed the paper part I closed the document on my computer without saving it. I then became very anxious and searched on every file to see if I could recover it. I couldn’t find it, and therefore had to rewrite the entire paper all over again! When I finally finished it was 5am. That left me two hours to sleep because the class I had to present in was at 8. I woke up, got an extra large coffee, and somehow managed to get through my presentation. Although I got a decent grade, if I had not procrastinated my grade could have been much higher. Also, if I started the assignment much earlier in the semester I would not have been as anxious as I was that night.
Below is a link about procrastination. It is a cartoon is about a man that is trying to get “his stuff done,” but he allows himself to be distracted by many things throughout his day, thereby, procrastinating getting “his stuff done.”
Sadly, I procrastinate often. It is not something I am proud of. I have found that most times I work better under pressure. I have such a wide variety of tasks to complete from the beginning of my day to the end that I often put things off to the last minute and work twice as fast to get them done. For me, I know that when I have only a short amount of time to work I work non-stop. Too much time is often a distraction for me. I do not recommend this to anyone as it does create a certain degree of stress.
ReplyDeleteThat clip was me to a tee. I often find myself stopping somewhere, anywhere on my way to my final destination and getting caught up. Before you know it, a few hours have gone by and I've wasted my whole day!
ReplyDeleteSadly, I too procrastinate! Here it is ten minutes before the end of the semester and I am in a mad dash to make my five discussion comments before midnight. I had a month to do them, but, well you know, I procrastinate! Furthermore I just took the final exam at the last minute even though we had three days to do it. I didn't even begin to study until like 10 o'clock tonight! I have always been this way, and I don't know why! It always pisses me off, I get angry at myself and say that I am not going to do it any more, but here we are! Oh crap now I only have 6 minutes before midnight! Not quite the last minute yet, perhaps I will watch some TV for a while......
ReplyDelete