by Katherine Sperduto ’19

Throughout my high school career, my life has changed in many ways. My friend groups changed, my classes changed, fashion trends changed, my responsibilities and freedoms changed, my interests and hobbies changed. But, the one thing that never changed in my life, is my awful disease of procrastination. Even to this day, I sit here, three o’clock in the morning, writing this column that is now 3 days passed its due date.

If there is one piece of advice I could give to rising seniors, it’s to nip the habit of procrastination in the butt before it stresses you out more in the future. Yes, there are short term reliefs that come along with procrastination because it gives you the ability to sit and take a breather and put your responsibilities on pause. But, I have learned that putting the assignment on pause is just that, “paused” not “deleted.”

By pausing these assignments, I dug myself into a hole. I had mounds of items to take care of all in a short period of time: projects, applications, essays, tests, doctors appointments, work, and even getting the oil changed in my car (which I had waited three months to take care of). I was stressed out much more than the normal stress seniors should be experiencing.

I needed to figure out how to get out of this situation. I didn’t even know where to begin. So I did the thing I do best, I paused. I took a few “mental health” days to recollect, regroup, and refocus. I caught up on sleep, I exercised, and I ate healthy meals to get myself back on track. I cleaned up my room and cleaned out my car and decided to start from scratch. I read somewhere that if a task should take you less than 5 minutes, do it immediately. So that’s what I started to do. However, first things first, I got the oil changed in my car.

After I took care of the important items first (car, doctors appointments, tests, and work), I got “list happy.” I made a list of all the tasks I had to start, ones that I had to complete, and tasks that I already completed. It was a long list and I felt overwhelmed, so I began with dates. I organized my lists in the range of when those items needed to be completed by. The closer the date, the higher the importance. I allocated time to each assignment and if I needed to take a day to heavily focus on one assignment, I would, as long as it didn’t harm my productivity in other areas of my life. I regret not learning how to stay organized in high school. I find myself having to learn how to be organized now, months before I start college.

Although I may not be the most organized, I sleep through my 500 alarm clocks in the morning, my phone is never charged and I am always scrambling for a charger, and I never have a pencil or pen. I have learned, the hard way, how to organize my assignments and make them more manageable. Which in turn has helped me alleviate unnecessary stress in my daily life.