The Procrastinator

by Max Staschover

Here begins the prologue of the Procrastinator’s tale: Most people see procrastinating, as a terrible thing that stops you from succeeding in life; that is not true, procrastination is simply a lifestyle, a choice. I have been procrastinating all my life whether it be sleeping instead of reading, or playing rather than writing. Often, I’ll stop work to stare at a wall, because a lot of times that becomes more interesting.  I believe that when a teacher gives a due date for a homework assignment, the students and the teacher both know that the kids aren’t going to use the time to gradually finish it, they just need a while to push it off. In fact, I have an essay due and 2 tests tomorrow, and I’m spending my time here, telling a story. The story will tell is about a boy named John who is trying to write an essay within the time constraints of a short Friday day. Here end the prologue of the Procrastinator’s tale

Here begin the Procrastinator’s tale:  The story begins Thursday night, around 2 AM. A boy named John has just finished playing on his laptop when he realizes that he has an essay due the next day. The assignment was that he had to right a story about someone telling a tale. John had been well aware that at some point this assignment had needed to be done for quite some time. John pulled up Microsoft word on his laptop, and began to write the heading, after he finished, he decided that the heading had been enough progress for him to reward himself with a break.

He goes to take a shower, comes back, plays on his laptop for a couple minutes, and then decides to return back to his work. He looks and sees that he hadn’t yet decided what he was going to write about. John comes up with something, but later discards the idea, thinking it will be too hard to write about.  He thinks about idea he might want to write about for the next thirty minutes without success.  John’s eyes began to feel heavy; he thought nothing of it. About ten seconds later, he blinked, and it became morning. John got up, and noticed that he woke up face down on his laptop. Also he noticed that no work had been done, and that he had to somehow get it done. It was a Friday, meaning that it was a shorter day of school. John began to think of each class he had that day, he realized that he had five periods out of the day that allowed him to use his laptop. So John got up, brushed his teeth, washed his face, and boarded the bus to school. When he arrived he started to head toward his first period class: Chemistry. Chemistry was a double period on Fridays, so it counted as two out of the five periods he had to work. The first thing his teacher said was “today you will be doing a lab, so everyone find a partner and go to a lab station”. Two potential periods to work on his essay, were now gone. Now John only had three left. After Chemistry, John made his way toward his third period class: English. When john pulled out his laptop, he realized that he still had no idea on what to write about. He decided to settle for the idea he rejected the night before. The idea was, to write a story about a procrastinator. The assignment was that the person’s tale needed a prologue; he finished that over the course of the period. Then, after English class was lunch.  John had no money for lunch, because his sister asked to borrow the only five dollars he had in his wallet. So he knew that he would not have any distractions stopping him from finishing his essay. The problem John had, was that he still did not know which story he was going to write about, he had figured out the choice for who would be telling the story, but not what the story was itself. He asked a friend for a suggestion, to which he replied, “Maybe you should use the story from the movie Ferris bueler’s day off”. John agreed and went to the lunchroom to begin writing the story. He sat next to another friend of his, to which he told about the story he was writing. The friend said, “Know what would be a good idea for a story? If you wrote about how you were doing the essay now”. John really liked the idea, so he began writing about that instead. Throughout lunch, John had written a good portion of the story, but he was not very close to being finished. After lunch, he needed to go to Gemara class. John thought that maybe because his class consisted of only four people, that his teacher would let him work on the assignment. She agreed, and suggested that we just have a free period. By the end of that period, John had gotten closer to finishing the essay. During the next couple periods, John was not allowed to use his laptop in class, so he did not get any more work done until his last period class: history, where he got even more work done. To his surprise John still had not finished the essay, but the teacher said that it was to be submitted online, so he still had some more time. When John got on the bus to go home he finished the essay. All he had to do was make some small changes, and type the last couple of words. John had succeeded in writing his essay; the fact that he procrastinated did not stop him at all. The only effect of his procrastination was that he did it one day later, and actually made that day kind of interesting, which isn’t bad at all.  Here ends the Procrastinator’s tale.