The Procrastinators Among Us

Harvard always introduces exams with a generous week-and-a-half holiday they call reading period. During these ten days, students have the opportunity to write final papers, study for finals and catch-up on any material passed over during the semester. The design of reading period fits Harvard students to the T; not only does it gives diligent students ample time to pace their studying, but it also gives the procrastinators among us generous opportunity to further postpone their paper-writing and cramming.

The disparity between students who do and don’t procrastinate becomes more conspicuous during reading period than during any other time of the year. The studious types, for example, eat their dinner at 5 p.m. when the dining hall opens, looking for any excuse to take a break from their mountain of work. The procrastinators are the ones pulling all-nighters—even when they haven’t had another thing to do for a week.

But, to be fair, everyone procrastinates to some degree. None of us start our assignments the day we receive them, and few of us have a strong enough work ethic to forgo everything in the name of papers and exams. But such examples are mere kid’s play for the exceptional procrastinators among us, who have perfected the particular lifestyle and who swear by its efficiency and success rate.

Thousands of certified psychologists and therapists have provided theories about why students procrastinate. One of the most popular arguments is that procrastination stems from competitiveness and performance anxiety. This theory seems particularly appropriate for Harvard students, most of whom couldn’t admit to any grade but an A for something that they really put their best effort into. It’s much easier for a student to accept a B or a C on a paper written mere hours before the due date because he, obviously, would have done much better if he had started earlier—and if he cared enough.

This is one explanation that seems plausible, but I don’t think it accounts for another, more intriguing factor at work when students put off their work until the last minute, force themselves to churn out mini-theses overnight and complete the finished product with less than an hour to spare: confidence. It takes remarkable amounts of faith and certainty in oneself to leave a mere twenty-four hours to deconstruct Kantian metaphysics or to absorb the entire set of mechanisms for an orgo exam. For many of us at this school, myself included, the thought of waiting until the last minute to complete an assignment worth half of the final grade makes us sick to our stomachs. For others, it’s just another day in the life. And the difference between the two groups of students is the amount of confidence they have in themselves, and in their ability to pull it off until as late as possible.

Interestingly, drawing upon what I have observed at this school for four years, I have noticed a notable subdivision within these two groups of students. Although I have no empirical data to back-up my observation, and I acknowledge the exceptions to every rule, it seems that those more willing to accept the risks of procrastination, the group I would label the more confident among us, tend to be the guys, and the students who take more time with their work, and have less faith in their ability to perform under pressure, tend to be the girls.

The typical female Harvard student, if there is one, is a fascinating character: usually an exceptional note-taker and a religious to-do list maker, she also arrives at her 10 a.m. lectures on time, attends office hours and leaves herself enough time to outline her essays, in detail, before she begins writing them—and to have an extra day to revise them before the ultimate deadline. Most guys, it seems, drawing upon some incredible reserve of confidence, find such efforts superfluous because their gut assures them it all will come together in the end, anyway. Insanely dedicated pre-med boys consistently negate this observation, but, in general, there are many fewer laid-back girls at this school than there are guys when it comes to academics.

Many of us study differently today than we did in high school, as we have developed methods of writing and cramming that suit the lifestyles we have chosen for ourselves in college. If the staff at the Bureau of Study Counsel observed some procrastinators’ approach to papers and assignments, they would probably, and rightfully so, recommend some serious “study counseling seminars” for them —if not something more serious than that. Unfortunately, I doubt it would do very much good; our study habits stem from our personalities, and our personalities define our approach to learning and our concern with academics from the first.

It comes down to a question of priorities: best effort vs. efficiency, recommended method vs. personal style, GPA vs. the college experience. No one holds our hand here, and the choice is our own. Some just take a little bit longer in making it.

Jordana R. Lewis ’02 is a history and literature concentrator in Eliot House. This is her final column.