Disclaimer: This work does not promote procrastination, encourage laziness and last minute submissions. It satirically reflects the pigment of those famous, vicious “last evenings” that students have.
P.S. We encourage you to read the story, while listening to this playlist.
7:00 PM
I opened the door of my room, with the expectation that my university deadlines will migrate to warmer countries. Unfortunately, they stayed on my Moodle page, and did not move, neither in terms of the deadline, nor vanish at all.
As a responsible senior student, I have to finish my essay and submit it in 4 hours. Wait, four hours? It’s not that bad, right? It could be much worse, if I had 3 hours for instance.
Oh, to clarify, 3 hours and 55 minutes left, because the deadline is at 11:55 pm. That means, less time to write, less time to research and less time to submit a perfectly polished essay, which contains secondary sources, well-done research, muting my personal opinion and providing an objective analysis on the topic.
After the realization of the limited time, the shades of panic slowly came in front of me. “Wait, I won’t manage to write it… So much work for 3 hours and 55 minutes … Maybe I should write an email to the professor and extend the deadline.” I opened my email account in a separate window of my computer and began writing.
Dear Professor,
I hope…
Now writing this email is wasting my time and keeping me from writing the assignment. I should be looking for sources. After making the decision to finally start writing, I went to my document, looked at my topic and the requirements of the assignment. My eyes froze for a second.
7:30 PM
I’m a genius for choosing such an engaging and narrow topic, but it’s so hard to write about it. I immediately went to all of the possible scholar websites. The trick is: to do it quickly. The right sources will speak up and appear. Fully emerged, I was digging into various titles of unknown sources, which could even briefly mention my topic.
Hallelujah! One fabulous paper has been chosen! Perfect time to take a break. I have made good progress.
My usual break plate meal consists of strong instant coffee with milk, scrolling through TikTok, wandering in the bedroom for no reason, petting my cat, and answering urgent messages from my friends. A quick warning, great ideas like: changing the world, travelling to Norway and the decision to start exercising, mostly occur whenever you have a tight deadline. That’s a coping mechanism. Meanwhile, I had already looked for airplane tickets on Skyscanner, while TikTok remained open on my phone.
8:30 PM
My daydreaming session ended, when I looked at the bottom right corner of my computer, which yelled the time. The second round of panic was louder. I closed the Skyscanner, kept TikTok in the background and started reading the chosen source, by tying it to my idea. My document started to fill up with sentences, later formed into paragraphs. After a while, I caught myself yawning. That’s a sign that the next cup of coffee should have double the dosage of caffeine. I crawled to the kitchen to brew my elixir from insomnia and get back to my lair, to finish the secret mission.
10:00 PM
The deadline was getting closer and closer. My fingers were typing faster and faster. My brain was pretending to be focused and my stomach craved a sweet snack. The signal of hunger went to my brain and I found myself walking to the fridge. The hunting journey was not successful: the fridge didn’t offer candies. In fact, there was only a bowl of chicken soup left. Suddenly, my brain woke up from sleepwalking, and I rushed back to my essay.
11:00 PM
The computer screen was too bright for my exhausted eyes, which had seen enough. The voices in my head were begging me to stay awake, by giving me promises to entertain me.
Submit it, so you can start watching the new season of “Stranger Things”,” Finish it, and you can eat the chicken soup! You got this! Afterwards you can go back to scrolling your TikTok feed! The motivations were valid and I continued to work on my assignment.
11:30 PM
The final countdown has begun! This is the moment when the essay needs to pass through the security checks and be polished. The font has been changed from Times New Roman 12 to Times New Roman 12 one more time (to make sure it’s correct). I triple checked the citation format of my sources and the in-text citations. I named my masterpiece and saved it on my computer. Voilà! I had my 6 page, double-spaced essay, ready to go!
11:45 PM
The third wave of panic activated, when I lost the submission slot of the assignment. I refreshed the Moodle page, but still, nothing. The slot ended up being under a different week. I quickly dropped my file and waited for it to be uploaded into the system.
11:50PM
The assignment was submitted 5 minutes early. I wish you could see the relief I felt after that message. It felt like from now on, I could forget the structure of the APA style, the essence of my thesis statement and the author of my secondary source.
Now, my mind was thinking about chicken soup and “Stranger Things.” The minute I decided to press the play button of the TV series, my eyes started to close.
