“I’ll do it tomorrow.”
Sure you will.
Up to 95% of college students procrastinate on a regular basis, according to a survey by the website Solving Procrastination. AACC students do it, too.
“I feel like I work better, like … under more pressure,” first-year transfer studies student Evan Bathras said. “I guess when there’s less time, I’m more motivated that way [because] I guess that’s just how I work. I try to get some stuff done early, especially if it’s like a big project, but little stuff I procrastinate on.”
Itamar Shatz, who teaches at Cambridge University and puts out a digital newsletter called Solving Procrastination, said research shows half of college students procrastinate in a “consistent and chronic manner,” while 75% said they are procrastinators, and 80% to 95% admitted they sometimes procrastinate.
AACC psychology professor Rachelle Tannenbaum said students might say they’ll do something tomorrow, thinking they won’t be in the mood to work on their assignments today but they will be ready later.
“They think that they’re going to magically be in the mood tomorrow, which they’re not right,” Tannenbaum said. “But it’s easy to think that now. And a lot of times, it’s not even that the task itself is that bad … but because it’s producing anxiety. Then as soon as you make the decision [not to do something], you say, ‘I’m not going to work on that right now,’ [and] at least temporarily, all that anxiety goes away.”
Tannenbaum added: “And that is a really nice feeling. And so it encourages you to do it again.”
Transfer studies student Imani Wortham said she can relate to this.
“I’d just rather do literally anything else,” Wortham, a second-year student, said. “Like, I know that it’ll just be easier to get little increments done, like over a longer period of time, than waiting to do everything at once. And I know that, and that’s obvious, but at the moment, it’s just like, ‘I’d rather sit in bed than look at calculus.’”
Procrastination is, “You know what you have to do, when you have to do it, and you’re still not doing it anyway,” Tannenbaum said.
That’s the case for first-year visual arts student Caleb Bickford.
“I don’t touch [my homework assignments] for, like, forever,” Bickford said. “And then I only have, like, two or three hours to do [everything]. And it’s just like the only time I do work is when I’m overwhelmed.”
Some students said they don’t procrastinate.
“I try to get things in earlier because I work, so I don’t really have time to finish it when I get home [at 11:45 p.m.] because I just want to go right to bed,” first-year transfer studies student Corah Klein said. “I have a gap between classes, so I try to get everything done right after class, so then I know it’s done and it’s in my bag.”