“Still watching?”
I don’t appreciate the judgmental attitude Netflix is using with me. I click the “Continue watching” button. "It’s been a long week," I think. And surely, watching all eight seasons of "Dexter" is far more important than my business coursework.
An unspoken rule states that for every hour of homework you have, there are two hours that could be spent procrastinating. As I go through my planner, surveying the massive amount of assignments I have for the weekend, friends sing their siren song, tempting me to hit the town instead of hitting the books.
Oh, procrastination, wherefore hast thou come from, hell-bent on distracting me from the important things in life? Earliest accounts date as far back as 30,000 B.C.E., where we see cavemen drawing crude pictures on the walls of their caves rather than going out to hunt (this species reportedly extinct due to starvation).
Jumping ahead to biblical times, eyewitness accounts say St. Peter did not fall asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane while waiting for Jesus, but was rather too engrossed in his game of Candy Crush to keep watch.
And last but not least, in a more recent context, President Obama flubbed while taking his Oath of Office because he had stayed up too late watching "House of Cards" instead of memorizing his lines.
I think it’s safe to say that everyone procrastinates. Even the most dedicated of students have trouble focusing occasionally. Is procrastination necessarily a bad thing? When used appropriately, procrastination is a key way to keep oneself from cracking under the immense pressure of a typical college workload.
Perhaps you shouldn't spend all night taking BuzzFeed quizzes (pro-tip: the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell). It might be prudent to trim down your hour-long field trip to the Huddle’s notorious candy wall.
But nonetheless, feel free to write yourself a prescription for hourly doses of procrastination. After a clinical survey of 10 actors who have played doctors on TV, three in four would recommend procrastination as a healthy way to stave off stress.
College is hard, but it doesn't always need to be. There’s a time to work and a time to play. In the words of world-renowned philosopher Aziz Ansari, make sure to leave some time to “treat yo-self.” You deserve it.
