I have been a witness to the inherent presence of procrastination in the lives of students everywhere. And because I have justed started this paper an hour before its deadline, I think I am especially subjected to the power of procrastination. While some students have attempted to repress the potency of it, others have fallen under its authoritative grasp. But, the origin of procrastination is quite natural; it derives from our lust for the senses and the moment. Though society has created a world that emphasizes the importance of the future, humans are innately wired to seize the moment at hand.

This clash between procrastination and organization creates a dilemma for college students. What has given procrastination such authority over the productivity of our lives?

        Last semester I had a long paper to write for Logic and Rhetoric. As I was sitting down, an indescribable hunger came over me, disabling my concentration. I took my last orange and carefully unraveled it into one dangling string. I broke the succulent fruit apart  as I clicked my computer on, and the juice squirted all over me and my work. While cleaning the sticky mess up, I reasoned that surely I was unable to endanger my computer again with the proximity of an orange. Thus I moved
away from my work and finished my snack. Now was I finally ready to work? My conscience said "no" as I began to throw away the seeds. The seedlings seemed unworthy of such a death. So after carefully rinsing them off, I dug through my drawers to find my flower pot and began planting my very own orchard.

After a slight two hour detour through the wanderings of my mind, my suitemate found me on my bathroom floor sweeping up the dirt and a broken flower pot. But was it not my natural desires that carried me so far from my important task? I allowed my mind to flow wildly, following its desires without meditation on the future. The mind surges over the banks of reason, rapidly reshaping the riverbeds and canyons of our mind. People are not meant to be confined in the tightly guarded prison of deadlines and productivity. The assignments roll over each other in a constant onslaught to destroy our imaginations. But where in my "to-do" lists can I put the tasting of a ripened orange or the feeling a raising a sapling from a seed? Why are these not productive tasks?

      When allowed to take flight, emotion carries the mind where form and order could never venture. This year I have experienced the miracle of seasons for the first time. Just as the brutal winter powerfully draws everyone inside, twice does spring have to power to pull us all back out. Slowly as the temperature climbs with each week of March, people begin to shed their layers of black coats and jackets in exchange for the bright bareness of their untanned skin. The sudden rebirth of the sun is greeted by thousands on the steps of Low Library. And our deprivation of warmth throughout the winter has made us hunger for it all of the more, that we cannot tear ourselves away from the outdoors with all of our might.

        I have to laugh at those who attempt to read and study outside, trying to refrain from procrastination. They sit on the steps with a book in hand, every few minutes glancing down and rereading the same paragraph for the millionth time. Then the movement of a crowd draws them back into the habit of people-watching;

for we all naturally prescribe to the impulse of watching our peers to either mimic or repudiate their actions and style. I say we should give way to our desires and celebrate the sun before it disappears again with the rain. I refuse to compromise the wonders of spring with the dull excesses of studies. Perhaps that is why I am so far behind.

        I find that procrastination is a characteristic more ingrained in everyone than the necessity of sleep. For if anyone is to choose between a few extra hours of procrastination or a few extra hours of sleep, I have no doubt that unconsciously we always choose procrastination. We are conditioned to seek activity, and college holds endless opportunities for social encounters. Procrastination provides an alternative for our use of time. We choose to spend our time socializing while there are people awake to chat, and do our homework in the quiet hours of the night. Thus, procrastination defers our work to a more preferential hour, that is sleeping time.

        However, soon our body cannot handle the lack of sleep, the effects of procrastination run deep,  and we swear that from this day forward we shall resist procrastination. I will make plans and lists until the trees of the rain forest run low as I fruitlessly attempt to abstain from the inviting nature of procrastination. All of the organization is futile in its attempt to keep me on track. College offers too many opportunities that arise an hour before happening that it is impossible to foresee future schedules and daily events, for now our activities are only limited by our imagination and our wallets. So I have to be flexible with my schedule and thus can easily squeeze in procrastination time.

        In addition, class assignments are obviously not meant to have deadlines because the hours and days are too difficult to remember. By examining the rat's ability to recall the spatial map of a maze only once traveled, you can see the gifts which God can bestow on his creatures. Remembering test days and deadlines is not a gift for the human race. Rather, we are gifted with the ability to make extensions, not deadlines. We seek to prolong life's moments in our drive for survival. For every
person knows that the ultimate deadline for all of life is actually death. Paper deadlines and test days are like death; we struggle to avoid their oncoming assault with all of our power. There are some who believe that it is best to get these painful activities over with, like ripping off a band aid. They do it quick and fast, pulling all of their hair out along the way.

I choose, however, to ignore the band aid until it loses its stickiness, like after a bath or a swim. So procrastination must be natural, because it is the essence of prolonging an enjoyable activity and denying the imminent pain of work. In the cultivated society, however, procrastination is a weakness.

        I have recognized my weakness my whole life and have never been able to change my character. In fourth grade I would always put off my spelling work, overcome by the giant task of sentence constructions and dictionary searches. I would sit in my room for the whole of the afternoon and evening pondering the injustice of education and whatever else flowed into my mind. Then finally at bedtime I would realize the time and would finish my spelling sentences in less than fifteen minutes.

        There are specific reasons inherent in our nature which make it difficult to escape the magnetism of procrastination. Because of the frailty of memory and our inability to know the future, procrastination is a natural human trait which rectifies these weaknesses. A friend of mine, Matthew, found himself in a terrible predicament two weeks ago. Plagued with the time commitment of a varsity sport, baseball, he worked hard all weekend to get ahead in his classes. Reading, writing, and slaving away, he did not exit his room except for the occasional shower and meal. Now when the deadlines of his paper approached, not so much that the procrastinators had started, the teacher canceled the paper in exchange for another activity. And by the time the class discussions caught up with his reading, Matthew had completely forgotten the plot altogether. Now I believe this is nature's way of telling us that procrastination accommodates the chaotic obscurities of the future as well our incapacity to remember everything.

        I think that it is impossible to overcome the power of procrastination. Disavowing procrastination would be like denying my hair color or heritage. I enjoy the adrenaline rush in the final moments before a paper is due; I enjoy the rush after an all-nighter and the crisp, thickness of a finished paper. There are those who are extremely dependent on this emotion; like a drug it tears and rips at the productivity of their lives. Virgil wrote in The Aeneid:

Those that can do their work, refraining from the gravity of procrastination, are surely the bravest of all creatures; they are risking their ego. For if we try and work hard, yet fail, how horrible we feel; we feel worse than the student who justifies a low grade with the hours that were not spent studying. Two of my classmates recently both got a sixty-two on a math exam. While one boy had studied all of spring break, the other had waited until the night before the test.Which of the two students do you think left the room feeling better about himself?

        Virgil also writes of the transient nature of our lives; our fleeting college years are numbered. What will I remember of these times? Will my memories drift back to the nights of hard labor, or will they remain forever on the days spent basking, playing, talking under the sun on the steps of the library. I will remember my time of procrastination. When Robert Frost says:

I cannot agree that this artificial work habit is possible to uphold. "Work expands to the time allotted" and work also shrinks to the time allotted. And soon Frost will justify a detour through the woods. He will soon find himself diverging from the worn path and venture out in exploration of the woods. Students naturally realize the wondrous things that abound in the lovely, deep, and dark woods and take advantage of them before their journey ends.