College Students Problem with Procrastination

Soon, I discovered a method to avoid the potential of feeling insubstantial, if only for a few more hours or days. Thus, allow me to introduce you to an old friend, procrastination. My way of thinking soon became, “If I’m not going to get an A, then why even put the effort in?” and consequently, innumerable assignments were put off until five in the morning where it would be due in two hours or it would never reach my teacher’s hands at all. I’m sure most teachers believed the cause to be laziness or a lack of ambition, however I strongly believe that if they’d known the constant stress, self-doubt, and exhaustion that I

Don Marquis, a famed humorist, journalist, and playwright remarked: “Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.” If that is so, then I must have been a prodigy. Transitioning to a pristine and more work-driven environment, however, forced me to pay more mind to my grades.

Besides this omission by Kalat, he still provided an accurate and detailed account of the research article written by Ariely and Wertenbroch. This article is essential in understanding procrastination and answered throughly the three questions it posed. 1.) Are people willing to impose deadlines, with substantial consequences if they are not met, on themselves: yes. 2.) Are these self-imposed deadlines actually helpful in improving overall performance:

Attention Getter: A famous author by the name of Wayne Dyer once said, “Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is incredibly heavy.”(1) In todays society it seems as if procrastination has become a normal and acceptable thing to do. It is often joked about amongst schoolmates and co-workers around the world. Nothing seems to get done until it absolutely needs to get done, then everyone runs around getting things done quickly and often times inaccurately. The trouble with this mentality however is that some things will never get done because something will come up tomorrow or the next day and what you are putting off now gets pushed even further back. Today I will persuade you to stop this habit from continuing. I will be explaining the problems we face when dealing with procrastination as well as how to deal with it and actions you can take to prevent it in the future.

The strategy I have used for reading and writing has been the SQ3R survey and skimming the information, questioning what needed for my lesson read it to myself recite it to myself and then review the information. However, my thinking too much on the subject have me second guessing, because the information I write I would like for it to be perfect. my struggle in this class has me running to the computer checking to see if grades posted or what errors need to be addressed but let me tell everyone I reached out to the tutoring service and they are awesome, they encouraged me and gave me confident to keep writing. My biggest time management concern is I take

College students have to balance work, family, and college activists and any delaying behavior from within can cause an unbalance. This behavior is called procrastinating and it can lead to problems in many areas of a student’s life. College students are the worst hit by this type of behavior because they have many different activities to focus on instead of studying. These activities can cause students to study when they have time which often is usually too short amount of time. There is a time and place to relax and enjoy life, but if students focus on playing around instead of getting their assignments done, college life will be stressful.

More and more students are piling on mountains of stresses and strains on their bodies but more so on their minds by choosing to procrastinate. According to Dr. Ferrari associate professor of psychology at De Paul University in Chicago, he suggests that the “stress or anxiety we feel over long periods of time can lead to more serious situations such as depression and other forms of mental illnesses... that will make our lives much harder to cope with.” The true ramifications of delaying or stalling assignments is putting one's mental health on the line. Students may gain anxiety, and or depression problems because of the exceeding amount of stress and pressure they put themselves under when students defer tasks. Another effect of procrastination is building up unnecessary amounts of stress.

During my time as an undergrad and now graduate student at Florida International University, I have dealt with a fair share of procrastination. After discussing this topic with other students I came to the realization I was not alone. Procrastination is quite common in university students and can adversely affect one’s life in a wide variety of ways. For students, procrastination may be especially troublesome, as it can interfere with the ability to

According to Semb, Glick and Spencer (1979), the level of procrastination increases as an individual stays longer in universities. It was stated by Ellis and Knaus (1977) that approximately, over 70% of college students engage in this activity. Undergraduates tend to start papers during the last minute; they fail to prioritize what should be accomplished first, and as a result, their academic performance is greatly affected. A detrimental effect on their studies leads to having poor grades and eventually, failure in class (Semb, et.al., 1979).

Procrastinating: we all do it, some of us more than others. Either way, it’s something we all complain about doing, but still always do, kind of like our schoolwork! As I sit here, 9 p.m on a Wednesday night, procrastinating this assignment, despite needing to be up at 4 a.m for my swim practice, I just simply have no idea what to do. I sat here for about 2 hours beforehand having no idea what to write this on. I spent the first 30 minutes watching youtube videos in my recommended, 15 minutes googling ideas for this topic, another 15 minutes complaining on my phone about this assignment, gave myself an hour break because I thought I deserved it, and spent the last 30 minutes yelling at myself to do this assignment. I was about to give up on doing some creative topic and do something generic like texting and driving, when I realized the answers literally right in front of me! Well no -not the blank screen- but what my mind was doing! Procrastinating! I don’t think I have ever been so excited to admit that procrastinating was the solution to my problem. So there I am, having my epiphany, realizing that this idea had potential. So being the typical high school student that I am, I took another break. It’s now 9:30, and I have to be up at 4 a.m, and my reasoning for not completing this assignment is that I keep telling myself “5 more minutes”, fully aware that if I completed this assignment

The definition of limit according to Dictionary.com is “The final, utmost, or furthest boundary or point as to extent, amount, continuance, procedure”. The definition of distraction as stated by the Psychology Dictionary is “An interruption to attention or anything that draws attention away from the primary task”. While time is the enemy of a procrastinator, distraction is its best friend. One of the main reasons as to why procrastination is more popular among college students today than it was fifty years ago is because of technology, social media to be exact. There is YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. All of these examples play a major role in the act of distractions. In Distraction and Procrastination, Asia Noelle Torres writes,

“I’ll stop procrastinating…Tomorrow.” This is a mindset that is possessed by a majority of students today. Although putting off writing that English paper until the night before it is due may not seem like a big deal, it has many harmful effects. In fact, what better topic is there for that English paper? Very few are spared from the epidemic known as procrastination. Even less overcome this issue. In order to successfully defeat procrastination, we must first understand it.

A great deal of students don’t develop effective study habits and this ultimately results in feeling a decreased sense of self-esteem, stress, disorganisation, poor academic success, and a negative sense of self-efficacy which is linked to poor self-control (Pychyl & Dann, 2010). This is primarily caused by procrastinating. Procrastination is delaying an activity that possesses important benefits for us in the long-term but is voluntarily delayed in the short-term because of short-term impulsive temptations which offer greater immediate rewards (Steel, 2007). I chose to modify this problematic target behaviour because it was where I exercised poor self-control.

Many people believe that procrastination is derived completely from laziness but the culprit could be multiple things, including perfectionism. This can become a huge problem for perfectionists, especially perfectionist students. They most likely will overthink projects and put off getting started because they’re afraid they won’t be able to make them as perfect as they want them to be. Luckily this is a common issue among students and there are many different techniques to cope with it. Students can overcome procrastination due to perfectionism by setting S.M.A.R.T goals, creating detailed to-do lists, and by just getting started.

Have you ever had an essay due in three weeks and thought to yourself, “I’ve got time. I’ll just do it later”? Does staying up studying for an exam until 3 am in the morning sound familiar? How about running to class because you were working on a project until the very last second? If any of these unfortunate situations sound relatively familiar, you have endured the horrendous event of procrastination at some point of your jam-packed life. The one secret that nobody is enforcing on your young life is the extreme power of time management. In Chapter 5, the topics we address are as follows: