If someone was to tell me that waiting until the last minute to do important things would make life ten times harder, I would have never believed them. Well I probably would have but still. It wasn’t until I got to high school that I really took into consideration just how stressful life gets when you put any task to the side waiting to be taken care of until the last minute. And for the record if the term “Procrastination” was a human, it would be me. And I know everyone procrastinates, but not as bad as me. Now let me explain why I say such things.

        When you graduate from middle school you hear things like “stay focused in highschool” and “make sure you keep your grades high to get into a good college” “ make sure you study”, and it all sounds pretty much like obvious advice, But what they don’t tell you is just how easy it is to tell yourself you’ll do all of that and don’t. Rather you go hang with your friends or just put everything else on hold until you get around to it. My first year of highschool i dedicated all my time to my studies and neglected my personal life in a way because i already knew how much of a procrastinator i was and i was really determined to not make that a habit this school year, so i did what most people did and i developed a routine for myself, that routine consisted of me getting up every morning around 5:30 then getting ready and leaving my house by 6:30, i would come home straight from school and i would study and do my homework. I also signed myself up for an after school class so I would get home every monday and thursday around 9:30 and i was studying until about 1:00 am. Also if I felt myself getting tired I would sometimes drink black coffee to stay awake, and that resulted in being up until about 3:00 am. So you figured I wasn’t getting the proper amount of sleep my 15 year old body should have gotten. My routine went on for half the school year. This resulted in my grades being as high as ever and me being an honor roll student. I felt great about sticking to my routine was the only way I felt my grades would stay high and I wouldn’t procrastinate. In other words I had a motive and it kept me on my feet. I think the text “Learning To Read” by Malcom X really shines light on the idea of developing a tactic or routine and being so eager to stick to it. This is shown when the author himself talks about how in jail when the lights went out he still had this urge to read and to learn so even with the smallest bit of light he was determined to keep reading. The text states, “when i had progressed to really serious reading, every night at about ten P.M i would be outraged with the “lights out”. It always seemed to catch me right in the middle of something engrossing”. Right outside my door was a corridor light that cast a glow into my room. The glow was enough to read by.” This is significant because it relates in a way to the idea both me and the author share about being eager to fulfill whatever motive it is that you have.

This however did not last very long, by the time the school year was half way through i had told myself that i deserved a day or two off from studying. So one day after school me and my friends decided to hang out and I did not get home until about 10:00 pm and I was so exhausted that I went to sleep when I got home. Like any change it became a habit for me and my routine of staying up all hours of the night and living off black coffee and two hours of sleep ended soon after. I started doing my homework when I got home or sometimes not doing it at all. I hung out with my friends more and never made time for studying. And I was missing school or getting to school really late. I didn’t realize how bad my procrastination had gotten until I received my progress report back and had been failing almost every class. Not to mention I was no longer an honor roll student. I realized I had done a whole 360 and I did not understand how I got that way. Worst of all, I felt so overwhelmed with how my grades looked that I kinda started to give up. I did what any normal teenager would do and I continued to hang with my friends, and stayed out late, sometimes even skipping school. But I also had my grades in my head the whole entire time and I couldn’t shake this feeling of failure off my mind. I needed guidance, and I needed support.

The worst place to be is failing your classes and not knowing how to fix it or where to even begin. I had so many doubts that maybe it was too late to even fix my grades, or maybe I didn’t have enough time to fix my grades. I just got up and went to my biology teacher because he happened to be my favorite teacher. Contrary to me not being so good in biology, I explained everything to him and he shined some light on the idea that procrastination wasnt my issue, my issue more so was that I had no balance. To go more into debt, I didn’t know how to balance a social life and an academic life. Most students have that very issue, they don’t know how to allow themselves to have a social life because they think they can’t be strict when it comes down to their academics, i was one of those students with that very issue. Procrastination was my issue but my main issue was conflict with my social life and academics. Soon after I got myself a planner and I went to what my school called “Outcome Recovery” and I found out what assignments I needed to pass each class. I made time for about an hour some days and stayed after school to complete assignments. I made a game plan with myself that if i stood after school twice a week then the other days i wasn’t at school i would hang with my friends and do whatever i wanted in my free time. I also developed better habits for myself, which means yes I stopped consuming black coffee and staying up all night. Instead I came home, watched some tv scrolled on instagram, did my homework and went to bed at a decent time. I stuck to this very plan and I saw my grades improving and fast as well. This gave me the motivation I lost a few months ago and put me in a better place mentally. Don’t get me wrong I still had my moments of procrastinating but the motivation to reach my goal kept me on a straight path to passing all my classes. Malcom X also talks about a goal he had in his excerpt “ Learning to read” that he stopped at nothing to achieve the text states, “ in my slow, painstaking ragged handwriting, i copied into my tablet everything printed on that first page , down to the punctuation marks. I believe it took me a day. Then aloud I read back to myself everything I’d written on the tablet” This relates to the idea of when you are motivated to learn something or have a certain goal you stop at nothing to achieve it. The author himself had a goal to learn to read his own handwriting and learn to read in general and he did what he had to do in order to achieve that exact goal. Very similar to the fact that I did what I had to do to get my grades higher and also learn to have my social life on top of my academic life.

In Conclusion, the great take away from my experience is to really understand that procrastination is an enemy but not something that can’t be controlled or minimized. It is not written anywhere that we as students are supposed to deprive ourselves of a social life or get wrapped up in our studies. It comes down to balance. Also, when you have a major goal and or motive it can be achieved even if you are facing dilemmas or are not in the best environments.  A goal can be achieved as long as you want it to be met. Malcolm X gives great examples of this in his passage “Learning To Read” by showing us he stopped at nothing to teach himself how to read and write while being in jail. And I got my grades back up by re evaluating my goals and making a plan for myself. It’s all about balance and having a plan.