Jaded Seniors, why do we do this to ourselves?

Author's Note: Pictured to the right is Paul Kariya after being hit by New Jersey Devils defenseman Scott Stevens in the 2003 Stanley Cup Finals. Kariya remained on the ice for nearly a minute, unmoving and not breathing. Suddenly he exhaled a massive breath and regained consciousness. He was back on the ice in the next period. This is exactly how I feel right now.


I'm a jaded senior. You're a jaded senior. (Robert, thanks for the terminology.) We're all jaded seniors in one way or another. The biggest fault of jaded seniors is a newly diagnosed disease called jaded senioritis with severly impacted procrastination and it affects all of us. We put things off until the last possible minute. If we ever actually did work on something for more than a week, then you should worry. Otherwise, it's completely normal for the jaded senior to go running into the computer lab at 10 am, mumbling to his/her-self about the paper that is due at 11:15am that they haven't even started.

I'm guilty of this. In the last two semesters I've written 3 papers, each over 5 pages in length, with only hours to spare. The most god-awful thing about procrastinating a paper is that, especially in my case, I always do better on papers written the day they are due. If given more than a week to write a paper, the grade steadily decreases, because I always change things around, reorder my thoughts, and end up with a stream of consciousness academic blathering that would make Douglas Adams weep, God rest the man's soul.

Apparently I was given a gift. My first instinct on academic writing is usually my best. My rough drafts would usually get better grades than finished, crisp copies. I hate to brag, but I've finally got something to brag about. Like this semester, for example. I wrote a five page paper three hours before it was due and made a 98 on it. Last semester I wrote an 11-page research snoozer, starting the paper at around 11:30 a.m. and finishing it at 4:30 p.m., for World Drama and it received a "B." Such is my gift. I can't pass it on to anyone, I can't even really share it, but it's my gift.

Now, back to the question: Jaded Seniors, why do we do this to ourselves? Honestly. The procrastination thing has caused more college students to go bald, or to reach a total vegetative state before they should ever consider those things. The picture above best symbolizes the typical feeling after such action. After the World Drama paper last semester I went home a crashed in front of my TV and, without any real knowledge of what I was doing, proceeded to play two straight hours of Call of Duty 2, racking up a higher body count than Hot Shots: Part Deux. For me, that was relief. Everyone has their own thing.

But I think we can all agree that, concerning procrastination, the after-effect is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick. It's likely that if we jaded seniors continue our reckless procrastination, we could have an entire generation experience Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure, in which literally thousands of students, most of them seniors, will simultaneously disappear as a result of stress alone.

And with that, the shameless Douglas Adams rip-off has come to end. Sanjay, start warming up, you've got the next post.