“What’s the religion homework?” “How many slides does my PowerPoint have to be?” These are the questions people ask me everyday during free periods. Unlike them, I have all my homework done and am getting ahead for next week. But not them. Here are my friends asking me for the assignments that are due the next period, and hoping I’ll help them out by giving them the answers. The reason my friends worry? Procrastination.

I learned the hard way that procrastinating, although tempting, can cause major stress. Sure putting off the work until later sounds good when you want to watch your favorite show, but the next day creeps up on you catching you totally unprepared. Everyone knows that hurried work is sloppy work, but apparently in high school that isn’t as important as talking to your friends on Facebook. Procrastinating gets you nowhere in life except behind.

Usually, my free periods go like this: 1. Go into the library and get all of my things set up for whatever homework I am doing 2. Start to work 3. See my friend get up and wait for them to come over 4. “What was that assignment we had to do for today?” 5. Sigh and tell them what they had to do and say “no” when they ask to copy mine. The part about this that gets me upset usually comes between the asking for the assignment and asking for my answers. My friends always say that they were “busy” or that they “forgot,” but I know that they procrastinated and are frantically trying to finish before the next class.

One instance of extreme procrastination involved my best friend. She had history second semester and I had a free. I had had the same teacher during the first semester. The teacher assigned PowerPoint presentations for projects each time we learned about a new section. My friend was assigned her first one weeks before it was due, but she chose to procrastinate. She did her presentation the night before it was due, and when she woke up the next morning, she couldn't find a flash drive to save it on. She called her neighbor and he brought her a flash drive, but it didn’t work on her computer. She called our other friend but he couldn’t get it to her before school. She tried to save the PowerPoint on the broken flash drive and printed in out and rushed to school. When she told me what happened the next morning, I found out that she was missing some requirements also! I don’t know how we can be friends and be so different because I get work done as soon as possible, and she is one of the biggest procrastinators I know.

Every where you look in high school, you’re bound to find at least one procrastinator. Students obviously aren’t concerned with the quality of their work and think that they are fine as long as they pass. I am the type of person that can get stressed about almost anything so procrastinating freaks me out. I just can’t do it. I finish work when it is given to me to try to take some pressure off of me, but no matter how many times I tell this to my friends, they insist that it saves time to wait to do homework. I don’t understand how they still believe this because I always have free time, and they’re scrambling to get work done for the next period.

High school students would benefit from not procrastinating because a lot of stress would disappear. If they understood how much easier life is when you finish work early, no one would ever choose to procrastinate. Some days, teachers load you with homework so you really have no choice but to do it last minute, but when a project is given out a month before it’s due, there is no reason to put off til tomorrow what you can do today. After all, what is today but yesterday’s tomorrow.