Procrastination Case

11:30 PM finds me in front of a glowing computer screen yet again. I'm waiting for inspiration. My friends reaping the rewards of their wisdom, they haven't waited until the night before like I have. I take a sip of Coke straight from the bottle; it is the sweet nectar of the Gods for Last-Minute Essay Writing. No, make that bittersweet nectar, the taste of its sugary goodness reminds me, with every swallow, that I've sentenced myself to another unnecessary all-nighter. I have few ideas and even less time...

The blinking computer cursor on an otherwise empty screen is my depression in its purest form, but for me it was in many ways, the same old problem. With rough drafts of an essay rarely required before hand, I came time and time again to a point where a significant portion of my grade rested on what was essentially a single night's work. Time and time again, my method, such as it was, worked for me. I not only survived but thrived. Yet I sometimes wondered, and still wonder "This works, but am I progressing? Has my writing grown? Would it be possible to turn out an "A" paper in a night? How did I learn to write at a level that has helped me succeed up to this point?" My early writing education is mostly lost to my conscious memory, but I do think that regular reading, from a young age, of books of all sorts loomed large in that education. Even then most essays received a mark of 80% and up, and most were written in one day, so my process, whatever it was, was set fairly early on. My own habits changed little as I proceeded through high school, rough drafts were still rarely a requirement; I submitted about 2 pages as usual, during the twelve-hour period prior to the due date. Behind the humour of my procrastination tales there are some serious questions: Would my writing have improved if I'd been in the habit of writing rough drafts, not just one hurried version, of my essay? If so, how much would it have improved and what difference does it make at all, if my technique seemed to work?

It does make a difference to me, not only because those nights with no sleep often seemed like a living hell, but also because I would like to be a better writer. Those moments of "desperation inspiration" which gave birth to many of my last-minute papers are a source of fascination for me, and are a topic I'd also like to explore. But the road of "more writing, more editing" is one I haven't travelled much, and so it interests me perhaps most of all. Maybe a born writer will automatically write obsessively, every day, from an early age. If so, I wasn't born into this. But maybe I could have grown, and still could grow, into it more than I've done so far rather than getting by on last-minute writing. in the end, it's the devil within that gets the "A"