Harrison Glicklich | Procrastination is bad

Good Luck | Another one of those preachy editorials

By Harrison Glicklich 12/04/16 10:34pm

I received a lot of well-meaning advice and aphorisms in my early college years: “early to bed ... ” and “beer before liquor ... ” among other things. I have mostly taken it as the oblique counsel of grown-ups that comes from romanticized memory and for lack of a better thing to say. One of those few tidbits that still sticks in my brain is, “you won’t be able to procrastinate in college like you do in high school,” invoking the rigor and complexity of the college curriculum. I have found this to be unerringly true.

College procrastination is an entirely different animal. Extinct is the sober toil that aims toward completing an assignment the night before. There is something glorious and severe about it now. For any given last minute assignment I can choose to make half a dozen mugs of strong instant coffee and, between bouts of gastric distress, work until the five minutes before it is due. Then maybe I’ll run across campus in all-nighter sweatpants to show the professor a triumphant expression that says, “Hey, I made it through! What now, punk?” I somehow doubt that this is my experience alone.

A meta-analysis from the past decade concludes that “80% to 95% of college students engage in procrastination, approximately 75% consider themselves procrastinators, and almost 50% procrastinate consistently and problematically.” And it is undeniable that there is a culture of procrastination on campus, mine being just one example with myriad permutations. It is neither unusual to hear talk of all-nighters among rows of GSRs nor in the maze that is the Engineering Quad.

For some, tolerance for extended sleep deprivation is a matter of pride in a way that is very similar to tolerance for liquor. A particularly strung out engineer comes to mind who brandishes his “70 straight hours” as a bragging right.

Who says we should discourage this behavior? I have read quite a few articles on social media citing the benefits of procrastination. They claim that in ancient times procrastinators were the wisest men and women. “Taking time to weigh all our options beats rushing into a hasty decision” or “procrastinators suffer late while others suffer early” or even “procrastinators are often big thinkers, and putting off work can be an engine of human progress.”

Grown-ups say “people believe what they want to believe,” and, please, do not be deceived. It does not take much to see through this self-congratulation. Certainly, in some circumstances delaying a decision may result in a better outcome, but this is rarely true for academic endeavors.

There is overwhelming evidence that chronic procrastination results in worse outcomes in the majority of cases, especially late into a semester. This ties into what many psychologists think are the major factors contributing to this condition. These include fear of failure, task aversion, depression and anxiety. Students who perform below their expectations tend to procrastinate more than other students. This results in lower marks and increased fear of failure, task aversion, depression and anxiety.

It is a destructive cycle that is, as one researcher aptly put it, “self-defeating behavior. It corresponds to the pattern of short-term gains and long-term costs which is a common feature of self-defeating behaviors.” In short, I am boldly taking the stance that procrastination is not good. It is, in fact, quite bad.

It is true that being away at university affords us freedoms plenty. For those of us who still had a bedtime in high school, we can stay up however late we want. We can sleep late in accordance with our schedules and even spend our free time getting turned away from student comedy shows. However, without the support of a network of teachers, parents and old friends, we also have the freedom to fail to meet our own expectations. Here, procrastination plays a key role, and I think there are better alternatives. If that sounds right, perhaps it is best to eliminate the option. I’ve retired my computer. It helps.