What role does procrastination play in your life?

Prolonged Procrastination

Procrastination has had an impact on my academic journey for as long as I can remember. I've always had a tendency to make excuses and put off assignments, finishing them much closer to the deadline than what's typical. The thing is I haven't had to face the consequences of my procrastination in very many cases. I've always gotten a wave of focus and concentration at some point near the deadline for a homework or an assignment, which meant I could keep procrastinating on assignments and still do well on them. I’ve maintained this compromise with procrastination for a while, but recently I faced a challenge that completely took advantage of my weakness that I had kept at bay for so long.

Last year I went on sabbatical to my home country Libya. We went for a school year with the intention of me returning to Uni the following year. For this reason, Uni had to look over and approve the courses and curriculum I would be taking there so that I could easily return without being held back a grade. Everything went smoothly and they received my new school’s curriculum. Shortly they responded, approving all my classes but one. Apparently the math course provided at my school in Libya was too basic and wasn’t up to Uni’s standards for sophomore math. The school itself couldn’t provide any higher level math class, so I was forced to take a separate math course elsewhere. I ended up taking an online Precalculus course with the University of Missouri Online High School program. I would have to complete each semester asynchronously with little to no help. 

The online Precalculus course was nothing like any other class I’d ever taken. Each unit with all its quizzes and lessons were simply thrown at the student to complete in order. You’d read the lesson, do some practice problems and quizzes, then take the unit test and move on to the next unit. That process was repeated 10 times for each semester with a Midterm or Final at the end of each. 

Last year, procrastination absolutely took over my life and reigned supreme. The only due dates the course had were the 6 month deadline to complete each semester. Apart from that, all the units were preprepared and you had to complete them at your own pace. Without any hard deadlines on lessons and assignments, my compromise with procrastination was completely shattered. There was no wave of concentration with an ever nearing deadline as that deadline was nonexistent. With the extremely flexible structure of the class the seduction of continuously putting off work overwhelmed me. Besides the tremendous obstacle of getting work done on time, the contents of the course were difficult to comprehend. The fact that I had to learn everything on my own from the provided lessons made it even worse. If I got stuck on a concept I couldn’t easily get help from an easily accessible teacher, so I’d stay stuck and lose even more time on top of the time I spent procrastinating. Running into such roadblocks made me demotivated to keep going, which extended my procrastination even more. It was a complete disaster, a cycle of being unable to learn the material and putting it off for extended periods of time.

The experience taught me a lot about the role of procrastination in my life. In most cases it doesn’t pose too much of a threat and I’m able to work past it, but for an extensive amount of work with little deadlines it can prove to be a major obstacle. Thankfully, I was able to complete both semesters of the course with an A, but it was my most difficult academic struggle, and I’ve made sure to stay away from similar courses that cover a vast period of time with little to no deadlines.