Procrastination vs Work Stress

I’m sure if all the students at AISG were asked this question,“Do you procrastinate,” then 90% of us would probably respond with, “yes,” or “of course, who doesn’t,” or “it’s my 9/5 job.” Either way, we have all been victims of procrastination due to which it can be assumed that we were unable to submit our 10-page essays, our IAs, and our video projects. However, the truth is that we are AISG students, and no matter how late we start our long-term projects, we always submit what needs to be submitted. Starting work “late” could be categorized for you as being 5 days before the deadline, a day before the deadline, or even 6 hours before the deadline – either way, I’m sure you were able to submit your work… no matter the condition it was in.

I’ve been at AISG since 3rd grade and the one thing I’ve noticed as I moved from one grade level to the next is the amount of work that we are given on a daily basis. I remember in the planner we were given back in elementary school, there was a small chart on the last page of the book. It had Grade 1 through 5 labelled on the left and the number of minutes you should spend doing your homework per week on the right.

Every year, the number of minutes was expected to increase by 10 minutes. In Grade 3, I was expected to do 30 minutes of homework, and in Grade 5, I was expected to do 50 minutes of homework per week. I can’t claim that I actually spent that long doing my weekly packet in fifth grade. However, if we were to continue this calculation, now, in 11th grade, I should be doing 110 minutes of work per week – which is roughly almost 2 hours. I can certainly claim that I was lied to in 5th grade because I feel as though I spend around 100 billion hours working during the week. Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but it is true that as a junior in the IBDP program I feel I spend at least 4 hours per day working.

Why is this? Because the truth is, sometimes we tend to spend 2 hours on the things that we may not need to spend more than 40 minutes of complete concentration. Perhaps this is because I, along with many other students, are victims of procrastination and get tempted by our phones, the TV, and countless distracting things on our laptops. But the most important thing to remember in that moment is that unfortunately we can’t use, “YouTube ate my IA,” as an excuse for our classes.

To test this theory, I asked a classroom full of people the question I’d like to ask the AISG student population, “Do you procrastinate?” Here are the responses I got:

9th Grade: ALL of the students I interviewed, claimed that they procrastinated

10th Grade: 60% of the students I interviewed, claimed that they procrastinated

11th Grade: 80% of the students I interviewed, claimed that they procrastinated.

One even adding, “Of course, it’s basically my life.”

Although my sample size is small, and certainly does not stereotype the student population at AISG, it is somewhat visible that as we go through younger grade levels to elder ones, our level of procrastination increases. This may be because of the correlation between our work load/stress and the amount we procrastinate as students. This theory can be understood by the idea that as we grow up, the work we are given at school becomes more complex over the years. Although the basic prior knowledge we require to complete the tasks given is almost always the same as the grade level below us, the complexity of the same knowledge deepens which is why we feel we are always just learning, as some students would say, “the same thing as last year.” The reality is that we learn a more developed version of knowledge compared to the year before. Ultimately, we are required to apply the years of developing knowledge to specific displays such as, IAs, speeches, lab reports, group projects, written tasks etc.  

The combination of developing, complex knowledge and specific displays of our learning often results us in realizing the amount of work we actually have to do in order to execute the display of our own learning with all the  correctly applied knowledge. Basically, we’re only helping ourselves by developing this learning over time.

Yes, we may not need all of it ten years later but for the time being, let’s try to do our best.

Good luck on your exams, and just know that sometimes, procrastination is healthy.

Not always, though, if you want to sit in your exams with a fresh mind, don’t be studying till 4am the day before an exam.

If you know your teacher won’t answer a question about the final exam on the morning of the exam, don’t wait to ask them 15 minutes before the exam.

If you don’t want to sit in the fish bowl on the last day of school finishing your CAS reflections, get them done now. (I should be the last person to say this, though.)