8 sure-fire methods to procrastinate your life away and fail exams

My current procrastination level?

Writing a Tab article about procrastination when I technically have nothing to do with the Tab. Now let’s get down to business.

1. Food

“You know, my hearts not really in this yoghurt” said Emily as she gazed forlornly upon her spoon knowing that in the last four hours she had only produced one and a half sentences of revision notes. You’re looking at the bare cupboard shelves for the third time in the last hour hoping desperately that a large bag of Doritos will suddenly appear, but alas, you are ‘forced’ to spend your time standing in the kitchen waiting for your pasta to cook because you just can’t possibly do any revision on an ‘empty stomach’.

Stocking up for a night of revision

2. TV

One more episode of Deal or No Deal, then I’m going to do some work. Little do you know you will say this at the end of every episode and before you know it, it is 2am and you’re craving another hit. All your efforts to stop watching and start revising have been in vain, for your addiction is too strong. You will walk into your exam looking like you’ve just emerged from a crack den where you will stare uncomprehendingly at the words on the page muttering “no deal” under your breath.

3. Cleaning

You’re about to start revising when you decide that a good cuppa will help get your mind into gear. You meander into the kitchen only to discover that no one has done any washing up for two days. Oh the travesty. It’s now your job to clean up after everyone. Revision can wait. But why stop at the pots and pans? Let’s mop the floors while we’re at it, defrost the freezer, deep clean the oven. You are now Barry Scott, you know what you have to do. What happened to that bottle of Dettol that John’s mum bought on moving in day?

4. Download Tinder

Oh shit, Carol just got tinder, all work must be dropped in order to assist her in deciding who is worthy. You then decide to get Tinder yourself, despite having absolutely no interest, just to see how many matches you can get. Your mate Dave will then proceed to drop his revision too in order to message as many guys as possible on your behalf because he knows it’s hilarious to make everyone in a 159km radius think you’re a randy inbred.

5. Take up a new hobby

You’re trundling through your past papers when it hits you, now would be a really good time to start doing something that you’ve never once before done in your life. What’s the worst that can happen? It is now dark outside and you have knitted four jumpers, baked the perfect Crème Brûlée and have almost finished scrapbooking your gap year whilst the past paper sits on your desk in the same state of completion as it was six hours ago.

6. The Internet

You’re pretending you can revise and browse memes at the same time; typing up lecture notes with one hand whilst scrolling through Facebook with other. One eye on your differential equations, the other on the Bee Movie but every time they say “bee” it gets faster. You don’t notice the hour drift into hours as you tag your friends in the memes that are “so us”. Until you suddenly realise that January exams are a lost cause. Because it’s April.

7. Chatting pure shite

Debra and Andrew from your Charles II module got with each other in Jesters last night. This is completely unprecedented given all the sexual tension between them recently. Everyone must know. You can’t possibly get any work done until every detail is dissected and cross-examined, so you go to your housemate’s room unannounced, plop yourself down on the bed and instigate a gossip session that lasts the whole day.

8. Read this article

The absolute best way to procrastinate? Reading this article. Now do some fucking work.