Procrastination 101

Welcome to Celia's lesson on the Art of Procrastination.  At the end of this course, students will be able to effectively put off working on their homework in creative and vaguely productive fashions, until they magically reach a point where they are willing to complete that work which they aim to procrastinate.

Part 1: What is procrastination?

Procrastination is the deliberate avoidance of a necessary task.  In the case of the seminary student, it may be blamed on ancient Greek's excessive use of conjugation and cases, resulting in an endless set of paradigms that is of such an overwhelming nature that the very thought of homework study induces tactics of avoidance within the student.

Part 2: Practicum

A series of procrastination techniques will now be presented to the student.  These techniques may be performed in any order and according to the student's preference.  Please note that this is merely a sample set of the myriad of procrastination techniques which are available to the average student.  The provided procrastination techniques were collected via a case study of myself on June 4th, 2011.

• Search for a DVD copy of Funny Face at 1) Half-Price Books and 2) Movie Trading Company.  After each of these attempts fails, order the DVD from Amazon for $7.50.

• Make a grocery list.  To lengthen this activity, search through two cookbooks and several online websites to find intriguing and appealing recipes with the cheapest ingredient list possible.

• Go grocery shopping.  Upon return, put groceries away.

• Make homemade hummus.  Since you do not have a specific recipe, you merely experiment with the rough guidelines once given to you by a friend until the result looks and tastes appropriately hummus-like.

• Eat lunch, including the aforementioned hummus and grapes, while watching an episode of Friends on DVD.  Laugh a lot at the sitcom antics.  Follow the healthy lunch with a tasty but unfortunate combination of chocolate chips, peanut butter, and banana that will be satisfying in the moment but later make you feel sick.  This will grant you an extra hour of procrastination.

• Research French Christian student ministries for your job for half an hour.  Begin to feel sick from the previous step.  Cease to work, and lay down on the couch.

• Watch an episode of Gilmore Girls of the title : "The Gnostic Gospels were Found at Nag Hammadi," because you are intrigued as a seminary student about how this reference will be pulled into the episode plot (spoiler: Lorelai and Rory attend a Rare Manuscript Society benefit dinner at Emily's request).  Laugh, and wonder why you don't watch Gilmore Girls more often (especially when you own the first 3 seasons on DVD).

• Go for a walk with the hope that fresh air will be reinvigorating both in health and in productivity.  Call four friends, get their voicemails.  Call your mother, talk to her extensively, and be scolded to go and do your homework.

• Sing your entire college voice lesson repertoire, along with assorted Broadway tunes, with the assistance of karaoke/instrumental YouTube videos.

• Return to the grocery store to purchase Bisquick, which you did not purchase on the morning grocery run, but which is necessary to make the Coconut Pie that you want to bake.

• Attempt to work on homework.  Become overwhelmed.  Attempt fails.

• Use the internet.  This may include watching YouTube videos, stalking high school classmates on Facebook, checking friends' blogs for updates, checking Facebook for updates, etc.  Repeat these steps as often as necessary, as the real-time world of the internet yields the possibility of new posts every few seconds.

• Sit down to really do your homework.  This attempt is successful.  You accomplish several of your assigned Greek Lessons, and make paradigm charts for the Present Middle/Passive Indicative, the Imperfect Active Indicative, and the Imperfect Middle/Passive Indicative tenses.  Become more adept at recognizing demonstratives.

• Get hungry.  Decide to make Coconut Pie.  While pie is baking, work on translating a newsletter from French to English, thereby making up the work that was previously delayed due to the chocolate-chip-peanut-butter-banana incident.  When work time is successfully made-up, make Greek vocabulary flashcards.

• Take pie out of the oven.  Marvel at it.  Let it cool, while taking notes from the Greek textbook.  Eat a piece of pie.

• Work on Greek exercises, until you begin to get confused.  Look over weekend to-do list, and discover that a significant amount of work has actually been completed or partially completed.  

Once this final step has been accomplished, the student is free to stop working, with the awareness that less procrastination must be employed tomorrow, and with a decreased feeling of being overwhelmed.

Part 3: Final Exam

In a weekend setting, the final exam is encompassed by the successful ability to complete the necessary study requirements before classes resume on Monday morning.  In our case study, the results of the final exam remains to be seen; however, we remain hopeful of our subject's ultimate success.

This concludes Procrastination 101.  Thank you for your participation.

Disclaimer: Procrastination should not be used excessively, and should not be used to the ultimate detriment of the student.  Celia's blog will not be held responsible for others' abuse of procrastination.