Let's not lie, we all procrastinate. We're college students, aren't we? Procrastinating is woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. We put off things from the very second our eyes open in the morning, to when we fall asleep at night. (Unless you put that off for so long that you don't sleep at all.) We put off getting out of bed, then we procrastinate while getting ready, which makes us late. We procrastinate on cleaning our rooms, looking for jobs, the list goes on.

As we speak, I am procrastinating. I am procrastinating writing this article. Every week, we have to submit an article by Friday night. I won't lie, I procrastinate every time. I often can't choose what to write about, so that delays my submission. Then, once I do pick a topic, I find myself staring at a blank page, like SpongeBob when he couldn't write his boating school essay.

Arguably the worst thing to put off is homework assignments. You've probably heard someone say to you before, "If you do all of your homework first, it's out of the way and you can do what you want!" Well, sir/ma'am, it's a lot easier said than done. Sure, that's what we all want to do, but it never quite works out that way. We look for any distraction, large or small, to pull us away from our schoolwork. We figure, it's fine, there's still time to get it done. And that's fine, until theres no more time. It's all fun and games until it's 10:00 PM and you have a paper due at midnight that you haven't started. Then, it's crunch time. Not only do you have to work under pressure which stresses you out, you cannot possibly be producing your best work. Since I'm a serial procrastinator, I am in this situation right now. I put off too many assignments, now I have a 10 page research paper, a 5 page essay, a 20 page journal, and a 15 page rough draft for a paper, all due this week.

Think about it this way: (obviously, this is an exaggeration, but still.) you have three papers to do. You put off doing them, thinking you have time, You wait until the night before they're due to finish them. You know you have to do them, but you just don't want to. Having this obligation will raise your stress level. It will creep into your mind while you're out with friends, or doing anything other than the assignments. You have to stay up all night, which will make you irritable and unfocused in the morning. This will effect your whole day. Not to mention, you probably won't do as well on the papers, since you rushed them and probably didn't proofread. This will affect your grades in those classes, which will affect your GPA, which will affect your ability to get a job. If you can't get a good job, you won't make good money, and you won't be able to live comfortably. In other words, procrastinating your papers will ruin your whole life.

So, the moral of the story is don't procrastinate. It will only result in you having a buildup of assignments hanging over your head as you run out of time to do them. It feels so much better to get things done and have free time than to have to stay up all night getting things done!