Procrastination has always been, well, something that I excelled at. It’s easy to put things off. Easy to talk yourself out of doing something you know you should be doing. But lately, my reasons for procrastination seem to run a little deeper.
In high school, I was a girl with a plan and when I graduated I had the next 10 years of my life mapped out perfectly. I graduated with high SAT scores and a 3.4 GPA, but still, willing ended up at community college. Well, it was technically a four-year institution by the time I started, but you get the point. My plan was to go away for school, leave my little bubble in Miami and all the sunshine in Florida. What I didn’t anticipate was how difficult it would be to leave my family, my newborn baby brother and my friends. See, life never follows our plans and the course it takes is often out of our hands.
So now, eight years after my high school graduation, I’m still working on my Bachelors degree. I’ve taken a few semesters off over the years, but never really got the hang of successfully juggling work, school and family. I was never willing to give one up, and time is the price I paid to do it all and do it all at once.
I started freelancing when I was 18 years old, worked as a real estate assistant, had a part-time internship at a Hispanic PR newswire and went to school full-time. Things became hectic back then and never really slowed down as the years went on. So I’ve been busy, to say the least. But now, I have this great job at a reputable newspaper where I manage events and marketing, plus I get to have the opportunity to write in Spanish for our online publication. Oh, and let’s not forget that I also attend Florida Gulf Coast University as I work on my Bachelors degree in Journalism.
What’s the issue?
Well, I feel old. I can’t help but feel like I missed the train a while back and am now scrambling to hustle my way to my destination. A lot of the students in my classes are fresh out of high school and just starting to figure out what they want. I was never that student. I ALWAYS knew exactly what I wanted and what I needed to do to get there. But I procrastinated. Not in the common sense, but I consciously pushed things aside to make room for obstacles in my life that never did fit. Ugh. Whoever said hindsight is always 20/20, failed to mention that it’s also aggravating as fuck.
Now I procrastinate with my homework assignments. They tend to be very detailed, for one class in particular, and I can’t help but stare my the questions in silence. I know I can do it and get a good grade, as my recent assignments have shown, but still I can’t make myself do it. What’s worse is that I shouldn’t have to make myself do any of it. I should just want to finish it. Want to take as much from the course as possible. But I don’t. I get by on my brains and a little bit of effort and that is exactly the kind of procrastination I need to stop.
Oh e cards, how you get me…
Jennifer M Lima 