Procrastination Nation

So, it's Thursday. Tomorrow's Friday. My penultimate (oh yeah, I just used the word penultimate in a blog post!) assignment for my very last class for my master's degree is due tomorrow.

Have I done it?

Nope.

Have I gone around the house gathering all the small area rugs and tossed them in the washing machine?

Yep.

Have I scrubbed the stupid corner of the basement which the cats seem to think is their litter-free litter box?

Yep.

Have I looked into posting said cats on Craigslist?

Youbetcha!

I have also checked facebook approximately 46 times in a 36-minute time period, as well as my email (all 3 addresses) and babycenter. I've checked all of my friends' blogs as well as some blogs of complete and total strangers. I have researched side effects of a medication that I'm currently taking (which I've done about a half dozen times prior to today). I have looked up prices for SuperWhy and Word World dvds.

Hi, my name's Kim, and I'm a procrastinator. I am guilty of using stall tactics to avoid doing the work that I know I will inevitably have to do. I will wait until the very last possible moment to do the work. I will stress about it, and I will stay awake until it is finally finished. The work will of course, not reflect my best effort. But I won't care because it will be finished and I will detest it so much that I will not be able to bear the thought of proof-reading it for errors (because I will find them, and be compelled to fix them, which will make the task last even longer).

This totally takes me back to high school. In senior religion we spent second semester studying vocations, primarily marriage. We had to "get married" and do a weekly budget with our spouses. The teacher brought in a giant game board that he'd made and we played our own version of the game of Life. It really was kind of fun. Except for the paper.

The paper. We had to write a big huge term paper on marriage as part of this class. I hated that paper. Fourteen years later, I still hate that paper. I vividly remember my mom setting up the old computer in my bedroom so I could type it without keeping them off their computer. I was practically chained to that stinkin' computer. And if I remember correctly, my mom stood behind me with a whip in one hand and a night stick in the other. No, surely that couldn't be...

Anyhow, I had put the paper off to the very last possible day or two. I just remember sitting there for hours on end, not really knowing what to write about, but knowing that I needed to make it sound good. I very rarely struggled with finding something to write about in school (or now, for that matter), but this paper was the exception, and it SUCKED!

Anyhow, I must have pulled something out of my rear end, because I remember not actually turning it in, but getting the graded paper back. Every year we had a senior banquet and that must have been when Fr. Lewis traditionally returned this paper. He gave mine back to me and I anxiously tore open the front cover. Big huge C-!!! I had never gotten a C- on anything in my entire life! And to add insult to injury, there was a little note--in red ink, of course: "Kim, I'm disappointed. I thought you were capable of much more than this."

I was disappointed, too. However, I knew that as per normal, I had not put as much effort into it as I should have. Maybe I deserved the C. Maybe the paper really was that poor. I thought maybe just B poor, but...

I didn't really say anything to anyone else. I just wanted to get out of there (before I started crying). But apparently, I was being watched. Fr. Lewis apparently had another tradition. He came up to me and told me to look in the back of my paper. That's where I found the real grade sheet. The one with my real grade of an A-. Fr. Lewis liked to play a little joke on a particulary uptight, grade-driven student. That student in the class of '95 was me.

He thought he got me. But the joke was really on him. It would have been truly funny if I had been the model student that he thought I was--the one who did not procrastinate. I guess I hid my procrastination well at that point in time. I no longer try to hide it now. It's now a part of my process: I clean, I gripe about having to do my work, I eventually do my work, I finally drop of exhaustion, repeat. In fact, I'm not sure that I could actually accomplish any major task without procrastinating a bit first.

Someone please remind me of this post in a few years when my children are driving me crazy by procrastinating.

PS--It should be noted that this post took much longer to write than it should have due to the fact that my mini-me threw a 25-minute tantrum over the fact that I would not pull her pants up for her after she used the bathroom. Yes, a 25-minute tantrum with her undies and capri pants hanging at her ankles. It was a beaut!