The Best Ways to Procrastinate

We took a major revision break to help you avoid work slightly longer

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There are no limits to what you can accomplish when you’re supposed to be doing something else. Exam time is here again, and postponing revision has once again become integral to our university lives.

It’s a hard phenomenon to explain. Procrastination is a big part of student life, and regardless of how much we know we need to study, something slips past the sensible synapse in our brain and tells us “Yesterday’s lack of productivity was not quite enough, have another!”.

Here are some of the more familiar procrastination techniques which have evolved through Uni life.

Facebook stalking.

It seems inevitable. Checking out what someone wore to their course ball just can’t wait until next week. Before you know it, you’ve managed to end up on your friend’s brother’s girlfriend’s wall to see how her skiing holiday looked.

Tidying

Your bedroom’s been a state all year and your floordrobe has become a sensible idea to speed up the ‘getting ready’ process. Yet something urges you at this stressful time of necessary learning to get up and get folding. Hoovering was a distant memory until you began to acknowledge the sheer amount of reading you should’ve done weeks ago. Now 5 days before exams, it’s time to plug it in.

Napping

It’s simple. You got up at half 11 and proceeded to have a hard day of catching up on New Girl. Having read the title page of your first lecture, you’re now entitled to a 2 hour nap.

Making Food

Final exams tend to trigger a sense of confidence in our cooking ability that nothing else does. Half a page of revision constitutes a break for food…surely! Why not look up a new recipe online and take time out to make pan-fried duck breast with a side of leek and butternut squash risotto?

Unnecessary Highlighting

We’ve all done it. When you reach that point where your brain can’t take any more information and your wrists can’t take any more writing, the easiest thing to do is highlight every single word that seems mildly important. This generally this generally results in highlighting every single word on the page. It helps no one.

Applying for jobs/Online shopping

You’re on your laptop. Your vision is blurred from the glare of the laptop screen and you’ve just read a page of an article for the third time because it just won’t go in. You decide to open a new tab and before you know it you’ve ordered 2 tops, a jacket and pair of shoes, and applied for three graduate schemes.

Working out what you actually need to get to pass

There comes a low point in every student’s life when we take the time to sit and calculate how all our previous marks may afford us the possibility of doing less revision. Be careful with this one – trying to find out the bare minimum you need to get a 2:1 will result in some pretty severe self-loathing.

Planning Post-Exam celebrations

Freedom is on the horizon. We can see the light at the end of the long, painful tunnel of stress, and can begin to imagine drunken happiness over the piles of rubbish from revision snacking. What better time to get organizing the joyous weeks of student frivolity that will follow exams?

Emailing/Texting to ask what your pals are revising

We’re not sure how this helps but somehow it makes us feel more at ease, in the same sense as if you hadn’t done your homework at school. If your friend hadn’t done theirs either, you immediately relax. You’re still fucked, but at least you’re chilled about it.

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