Long Night Against Procrastination

Have you ever had a paper that you had more than a week to work you left it off until the day before? Well, that’s called procrastination.

What is Procrastination? Many people have no idea what procrastination is and what it does. If you’re from a different country, well some would know some wouldn’t but…

Procrastination is the avoidance of doing a task that needs to be accomplished. Sometimes, it takes place last minute before a deadline.

                 Students working on homework in a designated study room.

                                                (Alex Dascalu, STU Journalism)

So, we’ve all done it at least at one point in our life.

But for university students, it occurs every single day. And a small university with big opportunities like St. Thomas University has decided not to put off confronting it.

Once a year, it offers student’s academic support, therapy dogs, free printing, free food, and much more. Especially as the end of the term is getting closer and closer and students need to get work done but at the same time to take the time and relax. Heather MacDonald is the organizer and the learning strategist at STU.

MacDonald: “There’s a lot of research about the academic procrastinator, in fact, there’s a researcher out of Carlton university out of Ottawa, Tim Pikel and he says that basically, students procrastinate because working makes you feel bad and other stuff makes you feel good and as humans we tend to do the things that make us feel good. Unfortunately, the university also gives you this environment where you are managing your time for the first time. So, it can be a little difficult to self-regulate.”

(Interview with Heather MacDonald, Jerry-Faye Flatt and Alex Dascalu about procrastination)

Procrastinating is an important issue on university campuses because about 85 percent of students procrastinate.

This one night a year students come together in one place to get work done.  Long Night Against Procrastination takes place from 5 pm to 12 am. So, you cant work for seven hours straight.   Taking a break is important. If stress is overcoming you, pet and play with the therapy dogs.

  Therapy dogs are available for students to de-stress. (Alex Dascalu, STU Jouranlism)

They help people be more active and responsive. A therapy dog can not only provide medical benefits such as stress relief, or lower blood pressure but also a sense of comfort, confidence, and companionship.

Of course, there are other ways for students to de-stress and that’s by painting on coffee mugs and making glitter jars. Crafting is a way of relieving stress. There are different ways of crafting, like coloring, stitching, painting and more. Everyone is different and procrastination will affect them eventually if it hasn’t yet but everyone deals with it differently also.

Social media also has a big impact on how we procrastinate. Before social media people weren’t on their computers all the time and they weren’t procrastinating as much as they do now. You receive about 10,000 messages a day. So, in today’s society, social media come before anything else and that’s why people procrastinate because they are too much on their phones.

Long Night Againt’s Procrastination helped students get their work done and relieve stress. Exams are just around the corner and students don’t need more work on their hands. Might as well go and pet some puppies.