Doom, doom, doom

I'm honestly not a bad student. I don't go out and party on school nights, and I battle sleepiness and hunger to attend my classes. Given that, what is it about the last week of classes that manages to turn me into a blithering idiot? The tension between laziness and studiousness is almost unbearable, especially when it's 65 degrees outside.\nThough I'd love to slack, my Type-A personality insists if I turn something in late, I'll fail my classes, get chased out of town by a torch-bearing mob and end up freezing to death in a dinky cardboard box. People who turn assignments in late don't even deserve big, swanky refrigerator boxes! We die with our heads wedged into battered cereal boxes, a vain attempt to protect ourselves from the cruel winds of ignorance and idleness! \nFor every assignment, I follow an annoyingly constant cycle of procrastination. I can't seem to work efficiently, no matter how hard I try. The only consolation I have is the fact that most people follow the same pattern I do.\nStage one: Determination. "OK, I'm going to write now. Got my Pepsi, got a can of Pringles, put up my away message. I'm going to get at least two pages written before 'Chappelle's Show' comes on. Yep. I'm awesome." Fifteen minutes pass. I manage to type a useless topic sentence destined for deletion and a few choppy lines of explanation.\nStage two: Distraction. "I wonder if my professor just sent anything important." During the next ten minutes, I check my e-mail, my LiveJournal, my favorite Web comics (They might update early, you never know!) and various news Web sites. Then I go, "Whew! How long have I been working? I need a break," and proceed to do something stupid like play Trogdor on www.homestarrunner.com.\nStage three: Denial. "What, it's only nine o'clock? Pfft, the thing only needs to be five pages. I've got loads of time. I'm going to see if my friends are doing as well as I am." When I stumble back at midnight, shocked to see how much time I've wasted, I segue right into …\nStage four: Rage and Frustration. This stage involves a lot of naughty words and rude hand gestures aimed at my computer. When it gets really late, I cross into absurd desperation. My friends have interesting ways of coping with this stage -- one vents by sending me a string of incoherent AIM messages in which she flings coconuts at my head. Another generally flops on the floor and proclaims, "I'm a bug."\nPersonally, the bug thing doesn't work for me, so I bury my face in my pillow and start seriously contemplating a life of piracy. At three in the morning, I tend to think I'd make a brilliant pirate. I could say "Yarrrr" to my heart's content, fly the Jolly Roger on my car antenna and whenever I want a doughnut, I could just grab my Cutlass and pillage one! Krispy Kreme employees would tremble at the sound of my name. I know piracy isn't all fun and games, but darn it, it's a rollicking life on the high seas with lots of booze and no homework. Besides, how could there be anything wrong with a profession that involves funny words like "mizzenmast" and "poop deck?"\nFrom here, the cycle generally starts over, and I get back to work with a renewed sense of resolve. Eventually, everything gets done. If the system didn't work, I wouldn't have made it to my third year of college. Fellow students, I wish you luck during these last weeks of papers, projects and finals. If you can't work efficiently either, I hope you can at least come up with some creative, amusing distractions. Yarrrrrrr.