The Moment

The all telling moment. The moment of no turning back. You check and double check and triple check to make sure every single requirement is stapled in there. You reread the paper for the 60th time and suddenly you see the grammatical error that must've slipped from your keen editor eye the first 59 times. Panic. Your heart starts to beat out of your chest and your hands start shaking and you frantically search for White Out in every single crevice of your back pack. Then you grab a black pen and try your best to replicate the font that you typed in. And finally the come and swipe up your paper, the thing that you sacrificed 5 precious hours of sleep for, and you know that it's all over. You can't go back and fix anything or add a better picture on the inside or make the title look prettier. Now it's all in their hands and all you can do is hope and hope and hope for a great grade- or at least a tolerable one.

Every single student who has ever put together a huge project or assignment knows that moment. And I felt that moment big time on Friday as I pushed down on the stapler and took one last look at my creative nonfiction project as I handed it over and had to just trust that I did a decent job. It feels wonderful now- having that project out of my hair- but there's still that little voice nagging me at the back of my head, telling me all of the things that I could've done better in my project. But sometimes, you just have to let whatever's bothering you go (not to sound like Elsa or anything), in order to keep sanity in your life. What I've figured out is that when you stress on and on about something that you can't do anything about, you can't really focus on the most important things at hand. If you can't do anything about it why worry about it? But anyways, you're probably asking yourself how this connects to my beginning story and here's how it does- all those moments you have when you can do something to help that stressful thing, do do things that will help because after it's all over, you'll only be stressed about it. Just use every moment you have to make things as perfect as possible and you'll be much more satisfied during that moment before you cannot do anything else.

Procrastination

Ever since we began working with columns, I've realized that I actually really enjoy writing them. Once I begin, I just keep going and going because everything seems to just flow together like water trickling down a smooth river. However, that does not mean that it's easy to motivate yourself to begin writing them. That's right, I'm talking about that procrastinator hiding inside of each one of us, some more vague than others. And since I'm writing this blog at 9:30 on a Sunday night, I've decided to write a column for this post, dedicated to procrastination.

Everybody denies it.

I'm not a procrastinator, I'm so much better than that.

But there's no denial when you wake up Monday morning with only 2 hours of sleep and a lousy paper about George Washington and his accomplishments. And then those thoughts pop into your head as you're sprinting to the bus, struggling to stuff your paper into your backpack without tripping over your untied shoes.

WHY DID I DO THIS? Next time I have a paper due I'm gonna finish the entire thing the day that it's assigned, there's no doubt about it!

But then when you come home from school with a new project lurking in your backpack (due the next day), it seems that there have never been more distractions. The TV, your friends playing outside across the street, the never-ending Instagram feed, the couch. And then you just keep feeding yourself more and more lies, just to make yourself feel OK with the fact that you're not doing your homework right away.

Oh I'm only going to watch two episodes of The Office on Netflix and then it's straight to homework! *two episodes later* You know what, I'm really feeling tired from such a strenuous day at school- I think I'll just take a quick little nap. *4 hours later* Alright! I'm doing my homework now... right after I scroll through Instagram... and Facebook and Twitter and probably Pinterest a couple times too.

And then once it's around 9 o'clock and you realize you still have that project waiting for you, it's crunch time. It always seems alright in the beginning because the amount work you must do is almost always underestimated. But the hours just keep shedding away like a cat's fur in the springtime and you're right back to where you were the night before. All you can ask yourself is one single question.

Why in the world do I do this to myself?

And from there, there's only two ways to go: Either accept the fact that you're a procrastinator and embrace it or make a true effort to change your ways. From past and present experience, I highly suggest to choose choice B, it'll help you so much in the end.