Students shouldn’t dawdle

By Bethany Peterson/editor-in-chief

Finish math homework. Write an English research paper. Get to work on time. Think about holiday plans. Grab the right Scantron for the history test. Is the party tonight or tomorrow?

A student’s to-do list can stretch out of sight.

We work all day and still face an endless list of things to do tomorrow.

With all the pressing deadlines and projects to fill our minds, it is easy to let things that don’t give us a grade or pay us money slip.

Filling out transfer applications, applying for scholarships, getting the car into the shop for an oil change, making dentist’s or doctor’s appointments — they don’t have deadlines that jump up and scream, “Do me NOW!”

But when the car breaks down because it doesn’t have enough oil, the college says it doesn’t have any more scholarship money to award late appliers or that dull pain develops into a head-splitting toothache, the entire world grinds to a halt until these easy-to-push-off tasks are taken care of.

The rationalization is simple. Everyone has thought, “I don’t have time to do (blank) right now, but I’ll do it over Christmas break,” — or summer or the weekend. But the weekend comes and goes, Christmas break races by in travels, gifts and eggnog and the summer passes in a blaze of work, fun and friends. 

We are left facing another semester busier than the last with a to do list longer than Santa’s and, more often than not, no money to pay for the list.

And so it starts again. “Spring break, I’ll do it over spring break for sure!” or “I’ll make it a priority over summer break.”

But if you’re anything like me, the list only gets longer with each passing day unless I have a superhuman burst of productivity.

Or, of course, when a task comes around to bite me.

So here is my well-meaning but often-broken resolution: one thing at a time, broken into little pieces that can be done walking to class or in a five-minute lunch break, culminating in one day with two or three totally different appointments.

When I stick to it, I get a lot done. When I don’t, a Mount Everest of things pile up behind me.

If you hear an avalanche, please come dig me out.