What role does procrastination play in your life?

Unfortunately for me, procrastination has been a big part of my life. Mainly affecting my schoolwork, procrastination has put me in some tight situations in the past. However, it has been a good and bad aspect of my school life. 

The best example I can give of procrastination positively impacting me was from my junior year history class.

It was early October, and I was in my first semester of U.S. History with Mr. Leff. He had just assigned an essay on the American Revolution and its impact on the United States. This seemed like a pretty straightforward assignment, which, with plenty of preparation, should be a breeze. Fun fact: Leff assigned the essay exactly one year ago (at the time of writing). While my classmates were carefully drafting and revising their essays, I was under the assumption that I could whip this up in one night. 

Boy, was I right.  

At first, I thought I could go home after school and sit down for a couple of hours and "grind out" the essay. However, I had forgotten that I had tryouts for a soccer team in Naperville, IL, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Champaign. Now, instead of being able to write the essay in the comfort and quiet of my room, I was going to have to turn on my phone's WIFI hotspot and sit in a moving car on the highway to write my essay. With a 1200-word minimum (average Mr. Leff word minimum), my work was cut out for me. After some long thinking for the first thirty minutes, I got to work, and I have never worked so efficiently. 

I do my best work under pressure. It gets my brain pumping and my ideas flowing. That's why I think procrastinating sometimes helps me perform better. When I am presented with a distant deadline, I immediately think: "OK, I don't have to worry about that right now," which is bad in some cases, like large-scale final projects assigned at the beginning of the semester. But in the short game, procrastination is my best friend. 

On that fateful night on I-74 going North, I was an unstoppable writing machine. With the pressure mounting as the clock ticked by and I got closer and closer to my destination, my writing flowed effortlessly. But so did the sweat coming from my forehead. I must've been thinking at the same speed my dad was driving. My tryout started at 6:30 and ended at 8, with one hour and a half of precious time taken away. As soon as I thanked the coach for having me, I went straight back to my writing. Speed was crucial, with only one hour and forty-five minutes left until my 10 p.m. deadline. I was in the endgame. The pressure mounted, but I did not crumble, and my fingers danced across the keyboard. I was on a roll. Typing at what seemed like a hundred miles an hour, I took brief glances down at the lower right corner of my screen to check the clock. 

In the end, I was successful. I turned in my essay with three minutes to spare before the deadline, and I could finally take a deep sigh of relief. 

In retrospect, I made a lapse in judgment. If I hadn't procrastinated on my essay, I could've peacefully enjoyed my car ride to and from Naperville. But, the essay may not have been as good. I don't always write under pressure, but there have been times when I took my time on a writing piece and carefully revised and edited multiple times to ensure the end product was of good quality. Not to say that what I turned in that night wasn't quality; after all, I did get an A.