There’s nothing quite like the overwhelming feeling of stress that hits you when you realize how much work you have due over the course of a week. Often instead of reacting by being productive and crossing items off of our to do list, students choose to do anything they can in order to avoid studying. Here are some stories from SJU students detailing some of their best ways to ignore school while being on campus.
Sean, a junior finance major will do just about anything to avoid getting his work done sometimes. He shared some of his tips on how to minimize productivity with us; “One of my favorite ways to pretend I’m doing work is to have two screens next to each other on my computer, one with whichever sports game is on and one with my homework. Eventually I just give up and maximize the game.”
This is a method you can use with not only sports games, but TV shows and movies as well! Long gone are the days when you need a TV to watch anything, you can just put it up on your laptop while you’re at the library and pretending to be a good student while secretly you haven’t looked at your homework for the past two hours. A perfect plan to achieve academic success.
Lauren, a sophomore communications major has similar struggles. She sees the library as a place to socialize and can often be found doodling in her notebook while chatting with her friends. She has more of a traditional approach to procrastination than Sean, by eliminating her laptop and phone and still succeeding at getting nothing done while having her notebook wide open.
There’s a sense of productivity that comes from going to the library, even if you do absolutely nothing when you’re there. It’s similar to the feeling that comes from buying new notebooks. You know that your notes are going to be beyond messy and that within a week there’s going to be water or coffee spilled on them, but at the time of buying them you are neat and organized and have your life together.
When walking around campus and seeing other students studying in between classes at least half of them are on their phones, texting or on social media. With shortened attention spans everyone can be caught procrastinating or “taking a break” from the break they were already on.
I am very guilty of pretending to be productive. I can find myself in the library with a to-do list a page wrong walking around eating snacks and saying hi to everyone I know. When I try to do work at home I simply get in bed and take a nap.
Embrace being a bad student; whether it’s procrastinating your homework, studying for 10 minutes for an exam you should’ve studied for at least 2 hours, or dazing off in class. I own my terrible study habits and don’t let the few people I know who actually are great students shame me into being successful. At the end of the day, all that matters is that at the end of the day the work gets done. How we get there is a fun journey. Yes it may pay to get everything done at once and then have fun after, but where’s the excitement in that?
