Is it Christmas Yet?

Just so you know, it is not currently Christmas. I happen to know this because I checked isitchristmas.com today. This was after watching every YouTube video related to “taxidermy advertisements,” attempting to recreate the “Derelicte” fashion line from “Zoolander” in the trash room, and reorganizing my bookshelf by abstruseness of subject (“The Wealth of Nations” at one end and the coursepack for “African American Studies 115: HBO's “Entourage” and its Contribution to Understanding Urban Inequality” on the other). When my roommate told me that she was worried about my procrastination problem, I asked her if we could talk about it later as I really needed to go rank our neighbor’s guppies by looks, intellect, and sheer nerve.

The collective brainpower at this university is incredible, yet approximately two thirds of it is devoted to putting off what should have been done yesterday. The other one third is split evenly between spamming House open lists and determining what sort of violent end should meet those who spam House open lists. My friend Lizzie has taken up needlepoint as yet another distraction from the world of Ec 10. Ted has been known to build life size replicas of Chuck Norris out of HUHDS cutlery and Clearasil rather than starting his CS50 problem set. Juan refused to get to his paper before he confirmed whether or not it was true that if you play “Dark Side of the Moon” backward you can hear satanic messages. That, at least, could be worse; I’ve heard that if you play Ke$ha forward you hear Ke$ha.

What possesses us to do this? What makes a school of 6,000 undergraduates, all of whom developed stellar study skills in order to get in here in the first place (except the recruits—damn you, Harvard Curling Team), suddenly forget everything we ever learned about time management and pull all nighters over papers asking what cultural impact sushi had on 4th century Cayuga culture? (Answer: none. Now you don’t have to take Societies of the World 19.)  I don’t think it has anything to do with laziness, as “Chuck Pore-is” certainly didn’t build himself. Perhaps it’s an avoidance tactic; when life gets stressful, it’s far easier to try to determine whether there has ever been an un-sexy vampire than it is to face the fact that the pesky “ni” in the middle of the word does in fact make all the difference in organismic biology. Or that it’s easier to write a piece on procrastination than to write that thesis chapter that’s due next week. Or that it’s easier to confirm once more that it is not in fact Christmas than it is to write that piece on procrastination. (Just checked—still not Christmas.)

But while I may decry the fact that Ted’s statue has pretty much exhausted Cabot House’s supply of silverware, something I hope will be addressed in President Faust’s annual “State of the Spoon-ion” address, I do believe that procrastination can provide students with some of the best college memories. Between sitting down to write this piece and finishing it, I went to Berryline, ate breakfast, checked Facebook, scoured my email for anything not sent over an email list, wrote a villanelle involving the Ghost of Christmas Future Perfect, went to Berryline, rewrote my poem as an Elegiac couplet entitled “Back to the Future Perfect,” read a book on consulting case interviews, watched some friends play fantasy football, lost my book on consulting case interviews, went to Berryline, watched a YouTube video on consulting case interviews, and, using my newfound quantitative analytical skills, determined that men who participate in fantasy football are statistically more likely than their non-fantastic friends to limit themselves to fantasy sex. How can that not be considered productive (except maybe for the fantasy football guys)? At the very least, this day of what the judgmental among us might refer to as “not actually getting anything done” will prepare me for my future career in Congress.

Procrastination can be so much more than wasting your time. It can be watching enough CNN to finally perfect that Sarah Palin accent you’ve been working on since 2008. (Productive? You betcha!) It can be bringing your colorblind roommate to a stoplight party and watching the hilarity that ensures. I know life feels hard right now, I tell her, but the grass is always redder on the other side. Procrastination, without any effort expended on your part, can turn the most boring day into the most boring night—and you only have to wait 12 hours!

So, friends, go forth and procrastinate. Put down the Crimson and go for a bike ride.

Are you back yet?

No?

Good. I’ll finish writing this column later. But first, I need to grab some chocolate pudding from the dining hall—literally, thanks to Ted—and just check one more time to see if it’s Christmas.

Brett Rosenberg ’12, a Crimson editorial writer, is a history concentrator in Cabot House. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.