Everything you’ll do to avoid revising today

You’ll probably even read this

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As exam panic takes hold, now is the time you can really put in some good work and see the results. So naturally, you’ll do exactly the opposite. Here’s a plan to maximise your procrastination, while deadlines loom and your future hangs in the balance.

Take an obnoxiously long shower

During the exam period, the shower is the only place you’re truly safe from revision. If you’re in here you have no worries, even though you’ve been washing your hair for so long you’re pretty sure there’s blood in the lather.

Make a creative spider diagram

You never realised that Socialism and the Platonic theory of Forms could be connected, but in an intricately crafted web of pink highlighted polygons, you think you may have managed it. You’ll never need it, use it or even look at it again, but you’re glad it’s there.

None of it makes any sense

Pack for the library like it’s your Duke of Edinburgh

I’m going to need at least three different colours of post-it note, and an assortment of pens. Those books can come too, and I should probably fill a water bottle. What are the library rules on Trangias?

Tidy your room

It’s going to be hard to find all my essentials when my desk is so dirty – should probably give it a bit of a tidy. While I’m at it I might empty my bin, and these sheets probably need a clean. Maybe I’ll give my floor a quick hoover too.

This has to go

Make endless coffees, even though you don’t drink coffee

Apparently caffeine helps you concentrate. I mean, you hate the horrible bitter taste and the raging headaches and the way it makes you shit after 20 minutes, but you will literally try anything at this stage. But inevitably, whether it’s the 99p Maxwell House you picked up from Lidl, or the Ecuadorian blend your posh mate from Guildford got, NOTHING FUCKING WORKS.

Have a wank (or two)

You’ve only been sitting down for five minutes, but you opened your textbook and saw a picture of a boob and it just set you off. Your curtains are already closed and the incognito tab is already open. Be better than this.

 

Go to the gym

Who cares if you didn’t go for the whole of first term – it’s a new year, and you’re going to sculpt a new you. Or maybe you’re going to pedal slowly on the stationary bike while you watch a muted episode of Jeremy Kyle on the TV on the wall. Exercise gets the brain going, you tell yourself.

Obsessively shop for revision essentials

You’ll take trip after trip to the stationary shop in the Union like a junkie looking for a fix, scratching your forearms and twitching as you pore over the extensive highlighter selection. You know you don’t need any more flashcards or post-its, but something keeps telling you just one more batch will help you nail your Macroeconomics paper.

It’s all necessary

Take an extended lunch break

The library cafe do a nice soup, but what would be better and a much more productive use of your time is a brisk walk to the other side of campus to get that sandwich that is only very slightly worse than a Subway.

Try to catch the attention of your library crush

You should be reading up on Nietzsche, but instead you’ll gaze across the room at your library crush, wondering what their hair smells like or thinking about the cute matching Barbours you two would probably wear to brunch.

Leave the library to revise at home

You’ll tell your coursemates that you just revise better at home, even though you told your housemates earlier that you just revise better in the library. You’re the only one who knows you don’t revise well anywhere, and it’s eating you up inside.

Too many distractions

Stare out of your window

You feel a strange kinship with the squirrel you’ve been watching for the last ten minutes. Exam knowledge is your acorn, and you’ve hidden it away for the winter. If only you could remember where you buried it.

Endlessly open and close Facebook

On your laptop: new tab – open Facebook, decide you should do some work and stop trying to find your library gf – close Facebook – new tab – open Facebook, promise yourself this is the last time, so allow yourself five minutes to check how everyone’s Christmas was – close Facebook – new tab – open Facebook, seriously this has to stop now – close Facebook – new tab.

Skype your parents

They ask you why you’re calling them, seeing as you only went back to uni two days ago. They ask how revision is going, and you semi-convincingly lie that it’s going fine. You ask them how their day is going, and they ask why you’re asking because you never normally care. When your exams are finished, you won’t speak to them till March.

Anything is better than this

Go for a ‘quick drink’

You’ll resist, only relenting when everyone is already out the door and you’re running down the street promising yourself that “it’ll only be quick one”. You’ll end up drinking six pints, and you won’t enjoy a single one.

Read this

You’re really scraping the barrel.