Procrastination is a bitch

This morning at 10AM our second writing project for this semester of legal writing was due. The assignment asked for 12 pages (too short) of predictive memo (too boring) goodness, all to be done in the span of 2 weeks. The special part about this project is that it was the same type of project we had to do for our last project last semester, except then we had a month plus to do it (and it was over the course of 5 projects).

I am not sure what happened, but my much of my fellow classmates this was an all-nighter sort of project. 10 people were missing from my morning class (btw, I have a couple of day classes), and when signing in, about half marked themselves as "here" instead of "ready to participate." Between that showing and looking at Facebook last night, I am starting believe that either (A) I must have done something horribly wrong, since I submitted my project at 7PM last night instead of 8AM this morning or (B) I really suck at procrastinating. My answer probably lies somewhere in the middle.

I do recognize this though. After looking at my research notes in Onenote (the greatest program ever), I started my paper 10 days ago. I started my research on Monday of last week. Meaning, I started the hard part of my paper last week and was really chugging along. By Thursday I had a handle on a majority of my research, including the summerizing of the cases, so by Saturday morning I was putting the last parts of analysis together.

I am not saying that my method is better than everyone else's. Who knows? Maybe those crazy procrastinators are getting the better grades and I am an idiot for not running around like I am freaked the hell out about my grade (I am, but I contain it and just lose ample sleep over it).

This does remind me of a story, and possibly the reason why I hardly ever procrastinate*. When I was in 3rd grade, for my Black History Month project I had to do a book report on a biography of Martin Luther King. (OMG, I remember when "book reports" were valid projects. I miss those.) My mom decided that I was going to be busy all month and therefore I had to get to project done immediately. In one afternoon, I read a 63 page book, wrote a report, and made a pretty cover (where I cut out the picture of MLK from the cover.)

Granted that was 16 years ago, but the principle still stands. If you got the time, do it. Although, I must say "Got the time" now means grabbing a few extra minutes after class to get ideas down when they strike me. Still, it helped me out this project.

*I did procrastinate a few times in college. The results were not pretty and neither was I the day the project was due.