Pro-God, procrastination, and pro-Yale

The World According to Carp
    By Benjamin Carp

So John Q. Eli is at the gates of heaven, and St. Peter says to him, "I hope you don't expect us to let you in here. You've been a liar, a thief, a Republican, an autoeroticist, and an unfaithful wretch your whole life. You were arrogant in section, tampered with your ID and reported it as 'stolen,' wrote a column for the YDN, and sullied the fresh bread in the dining halls with your bare (hairy) hands. To top it all off, you worked as a consultant and an investment banker before going to law school. At no point, during your life, did you think to repent for your sins. How do you account for this?"

"Well, I was going to repent tomorrow," John replies, "but I got hit by an ice cream truck today."

And he happily went off to hell.

College students are champion procrastinators, and so most of us can relate to this blasphemous and somewhat lame little story.

The problem with procrastination, however, is that we've come to the end of the year; your professors, like loansharks, will soon come around to collect. There's still time to procrastinate, though, and we'll need some guidelines to keep us from doing those last-minute assignments.

1. Don't do work. Whatever it takes: amorous liaisons (alone or with a friend), begging your parents for cash, cleaning your room, doing crosswords, e-mail, flatulence contests, going to section, hanging out, IMs, jaywalking, Krauser's runs, laundry, magazines, napping, outdoor lounging, petty crimes, Q-tip use, random conversations, shopping, TV watching, using the bathroom for any purpose, video games, working out, extracurriculars, yahoo.com, or (best of all) zealously complaining about the work you aren't doing are probably the most commonly accepted forms of procrastination.

2. Sit down at your desk, as if pretending to do work, but don't do work. For instance, minesweeper, solitaire, filing late tax forms, dozing off in the middle of your political science reading, or doing frivolous work three weeks in advance rather than your problem set due tomorrow. Always leave your e-mail account open while writing a paper.

3. Organize--the most subtle form of procrastination. Spend at least an hour figuring out all the things you have to do for the next week, month, year, or half-century. This will make you feel as if you're doing something productive ("Ah. Now I see that I will only have three hours to write my seminar paper before I have to start work on cutting my toenails."), but you can still proudly claim you're wasting time.

4. Allocate future time for work. "I'm going to start writing my paper at 11 p.m...this weekend...during reading period." This way, you can procrastinate until the allotted time, and then repeat the first three steps.

5. When in doubt, "Dean's Excuse" your way out (easier to do in some colleges than others). It may be unethical to fake goiter or an amputation, but you can always rationalize this by saying, "Hey, it's unethical for Yale to assign work while I'm trying to build up my tolerance."

I'm not going to sit here on my soap box and argue that you should stop procrastinating. Why should you? Yalies love stress; and what could be more exhilarating than starting a 10-page paper at dawn when it's due at 5 p.m.? College is all about challenging yourself, so make your own life difficult by crying "writer's block" and then making dolls out of your carpet lint for four hours.

Besides, our stuff will get done on time. We may get half a letter grade lower than what we are capable of and a full letter grade higher than what we deserve, but the important thing is to hit the ground running until that next hurdle comes along ("Sure, I can bang out another five-pager on The Significance of Circumcised Fruit Bats in Computational Shakespearean Encephalopathy.")

But what solutions are there for the chronic procrastinator for whom transcendent transcript transgressions are not a threat?

Eh, I'll tell you when I write the next column.

Oddly enough, I meant to write this column months ago. Anyway, farewell and many thanks to all those who have read "The World" for three semesters--whether out of loyalty, curiosity, procrastination, or just plain boredom. Whether you liked this trash or not, you've fed my already obese ego, and in turn I've tried to give you my best efforts. I'll miss you more than I expect you to miss me.

Last Herald Columns by this Columnist:
NOTE: SITE WILL APPEAR IN A NEW BROWSER WINDOW

• Sunny skies and truant thoughts, 4/10/97
• Class mobility: your future at Yale, 3/27/98
• When sex gets dirty: Yale, watch out, 2/27/97

Back to Opinion...