Here are the best reasons why you should leave formatives to the last minute

I'm a procrastinator – there, I said it. But instead of feeling ashamed, I embrace it – because the pressure of a tight deadline is all part of the thrill, and the feeling of accomplishment after doing an essay in two hours that took everyone else a week to complete is practically incomparable.

That's a lie – the feeling of elation can be even better after completing an essay quickly and getting a smashing grade, but before we get to a guide to help you earn the grade, we need to get you in the mindset of why you should start procrastinating all your formatives and essays to the last minute.

I'm sure there will be a day I won't highlight the whole page. That day is not today.

The pressure of a deadline

Once you have a deadline, you're more likely to get things done – and when that deadline get's closer you're pressured into doing your essay: no more 1 hour breaks, you become more time efficient and you hold that pee in Karen, this isn't primary school for toilet breaks every 5 minutes or trips to the bin to sharpen your pencils to talk. But we all know the best time to start an essay is in the afternoon.

Thinking time

You picked your essay titles the week before because you wanted to follow the trend but you didn't start writing the essay. Now on the night that the formatives are due, you've had a whole week of planning in your head and it becomes so much easier to write things down. Your friends had it worse – they changed their minds on what they wanted to write halfway through the essay and made a quicker U-turn on their choice of topics than Theresa May on Brexit because they didn't think it through.

Focus is so much better

When writing an essay under pressure, you're less likely to trail off and write about the Avril-Lavigne-was-replaced-by-a-dopplegänger twitter thread. You have to keep your points short, concise and simple because your time is running out – and that ends up earning you extra merit.

Staring off into the distance and thinking "paint me like one of your french girls Leo"

It is universally acknowledged that every student runs on energy drinks (not)

Maybe not exactly scientifically proven – but I'm convinced that doing your essay all at once means that you drink less red bull than when you spread it out during the course of the week – and that sounds like it's better for your health. So for health reasons you should procrastinate and leave your essays to the last minute.

Boasting rights

Once you do get your essays done, much to the regret of your coursemates, and you get your mad good results back (10 years after your degree ends if your department is as bad as Philosophy), then you get boasting rights against all the friends who a) thought you wouldn't do it in time and b) died for a week and came back to life only when they submitted their essay going "oh yaaa I did so much extra reading for this, it's going to be a first for me". Zero effort from you though and exceptional results. Suck it Greg.

Preps you for the exam experience

In the dreaded exam hall, you won't be writing your essay in front of your laptop for a whole week, so why start now? You might as well experience the pressure that comes with finals and get used to it – while all your friends breakdown later, you can get the mental breakdown done and taken care of early in the year.

If you're not convinced that doing your essays on that Monday 5am is the perfect way to live your student life then you're wrong. And yes, all advice above was followed in the making of this article.