My Life as a Procrastinator Free Essay Example

What is procrastination? First of all, procrastination is putting off some kind of task, postponing, delaying, rescheduling, until a deadline comes up then everything becomes a huge nightmare. If you ever been in a situation where a deadline is approaching and you literally have nothing done or even if there is no deadline procrastination can happen for example like me, going back to college to finish a degree that was started years ago but never finished. Many of us including myself suffer some kind of procrastination level.

As a college student, many of us are trying to balance out our life with work, college, family, and social life. This is going to be me telling you the story of “My Life as a Procrastinator” and the negative effects of procrastination that has affected me throughout my life as of this day as a college student, and my experiences on how I’m trying to overcome this problem.

As a procrastinator like myself, I’m thinking back as I’m writing this narrative paper about procrastination when did I start procrastinating? Well as a child growing up I never was a procrastinator until end of sophomore year of high school.

I was always striving to achieve my goals and wanted to finish high school early, and I was ahead of my class with credits at the time. I went to summer school to get extra credits to help achieve this goal, but something happened that changed my life dramatically. Procrastination is what happened that changed my life, and even though I never knew at the time that change was happening to the worst.

So thinking back to the question of how did it all start? It all started with a famous disease that is so contagious called senioritis. This term is used all over the United States to describe that seniors in high school are so close in finishing that they lost the motivation to study and finish school. Since I was a junior, or close to becoming a junior in high school trying to graduate early, I caught the disease early. Unfortunately, I did not graduate early due to this and finished with the class I was in. I don’t regret it at all that I didn’t finish early because the experiences I went through during my last year of high school was not only the best school year of my life but well worth the mistake. This was the start of procrastination for me.

After high school during that summer, I was working two jobs to make extra for myself and college was right around the corner. I procrastinated on enrolling for classes in 2008 fall semester for CSN and enrolled the week before the semester started which lead to most of the classes being full and waitlisted. Lucky me I was able to get into some classes and started my college adventure from there. From there on the instant gratification monkey from the ted talk video from Tim Urban was making all the decision for the first two years of college. Fun is what I wanted and that right there was a bad decision letting the procrastination get out of control. During that time, I just wanted to party, hang out with friends, and not study until last minute when the panic monster kicked in. I was juggling school and work at the time until due to certain financial situations I had to stop going to college after 2011 spring semester. I always told myself I’ll just take a break for one semester to catch up, and then one semester lead to two semesters then finally after a few years I told myself I just wasted so much time on procrastinating. Who would have known you can procrastinate so much in your life to the point it has wasted years of your life? I do believe that not having a deadline for a certain task is much worse than having a deadline and getting it done last minute. Without a deadline, we are able to hold it off for another time continuously without knowing it. Sometime in April of 2017, I literally told myself I am going back to school to finish to become a Nurse, and still going as of today.

The past two years I have been enrolled in college half time working around my schedule with a full-time job. With so much going on in my life it is very easy to procrastinate with school work. Majority of the time I just want to relax after work, eat, sleep, spend time with my girlfriend or friends and repeat the next day. I know one thing for sure is that with school and work I have to find motivation in my life to procrastinate less. As a college student, I believe procrastination can be my worst nightmare it can break a person like myself for example if I don’t break this bad habit of mine. There are so many activities going on in life, and instead of focusing on studying for an exam or even writing this narrative paper, we all would like to just enjoy our spare time relaxing or having fun.

During my college life for some odd reason, I can’t find a way to break this addiction of procrastination. For the past few weeks I been pushing this assignment off, going out and recently I went to Zion to go hiking with my girlfriend Jackie, and my two friends Dave and Irene. Before we went on the trip to Utah for the hiking adventure of our lives I have gotten about one in a half pages done the day before and told myself I’ll just come back to it. While we hiked the two different trails, the scenery was so green that I did not want to leave and go back to the desert life. There were shuttles that picked it and dropped off to different stops to visit. One of the trails was tiring to go through and took a toll on all of us. It was the narrow trails going through the cold water getting our shoes drenched with sand going into our shoes to the point where we had to stop and take a break to rinse out all the sand. During the whole trip, I have not thought about any homework that needed to be done and cleared my mind hoping to think this will motivate me to be productive and not procrastinate. About one week have passed by and now there is only one week left before this paper is due. I’m staring at the white screen finding ways to not write. I have been looking at youtube videos, listening to music, taking a shower, getting ready for work four hours before I even start work. Now I’m back at staring at this white screen stressed on thinking what to write, and staring at the ceiling fan spinning for a few minutes. It is amazing how much time can be stolen from you by procrastinating.

Along with me procrastinating on this assignment, I have also been procrastinating on fixing my other car to get it running again. During my college life I have always been thinking if it is the right time to get this car up and running again. It has been almost four years since my other car blew the engine. I always told myself I’ll fix it soon and here comes the problem again months past and then years. Since there is no specific deadline it has been a nightmare on telling myself to save up money to get the car back running again. This car has been collecting so much dust in the garage over years to the point there are spider webs. Recently I have found some motivation to actually fix the car which is a 2005 Subaru Wrx Sti.

Now it is the fall semester of 2018, I finally pushed myself to find the funds to fix the car. It has been a really tough time for me to find motivation with this semester being tough with all the assignments, but if there is any hope then I have to take this opportunity. Since we only live once, I need to take charge of this situation. While writing the paper it has helped me realize a lot that my procrastination problem was worse than I thought it was.

It is now one day before the due date of this paper. My heart rate is rising from anxiety of what if this paper isn’t good enough, why I didn’t give myself enough time to revise this paper earlier. With that being said I also need to get ready for work today, but instead I woke up this morning to get a haircut. While arriving at the hair cut place to check-in it was a forty five minute wait. Telling myself it is too long while I sat down in the waiting area looking at how many people were here before me. Thinking if I should get my hair cut another day because I have this paper to finish, yet I still waited. Then I got home and showered off the excess hair off that was itching me. Finally, I opened my laptop to finish the paper I needed to get done. Yet it has happened again, procrastination is what has happened staring at this white screen with words.

With my procrastination experiences, there are negatives that are involved in dealing with this addiction. The years after high school going into college life it has impacted me in so many ways. Procrastination has slowed my life down by putting off so many tasks that could have been a huge life changer like my career to become a nurse. The amount of stress and anger that has been building inside of me over the year due to this problem has not only affected me mentally but health-wise also. Going out to have a beer to relieve some stress by blowing it off can lead to alcohol abuse. One drink can lead to many in my case it has happened a lot. Emotionally I have also gotten depressed thinking negatively about quitting school from the amount of work I have to get done on assignments, studying for exams, and working a full-time job. It also gave me the anxiety from the fear of what if its not good enough, but of course, that should not be an option. Procrastination may help for certain situations to help process and do well on assignments because sometimes ideas tend to flow with creativity through my brain and start to write this essay. That alone of accomplishment that I got it done, I think is the first of many steps to overcome the negatives about a procrastination problem. Doing a lot of reading and research about procrastination, it is normal as a human being, and I have learned many ways to help overcome the problem. Just managing time, and just telling myself to do it now and not later has helped me.

To summarize the life of a procrastinator these are some of the few experiences that impacted my life. Starting with how procrastination put off my nursing career path for years to writing this narrative paper about procrastination and having to put off many tasks simultaneously. I hope one day I can have more control of my life, living healthy with less stress, and anxiety. Procrastination is normal in human life as long as it does not get out of control and becomes chronic.