On any given day, I would like to think that I take a pretty good stab at my homework. But the days go on, and assignments pile up, and two days have passed since and I haven’t finished a single one of them, hardly cracked a dent even. Yet I seldom feel the stress or the anxiety attached to the my admittedly sluggish work speed. Until the 11th hour, when my stomach twists and turns in knots and screams and urges me to just sit down and power through it. And I think to myself: “where was this motivation (read: crippling anxiety) two days ago when I had all the free time in the world?” And then I remember that I scrolled through memes and repeated mantras of cognitive dissonance in my head until I simply forgot that I had things I should be doing.
Even now as I sit here at 9PM, twelve hours before the due date (which I’m sure isn’t very long for most people to finish this assignment), I find myself contemplating how this will affect my grade (a lot), how little choice I have in blowing off this assignment, or perhaps how hard I can lean on my current good grades (probably not as much as I would like).
And that’s why I decided to blog about the ever-present cognitive dissonance I hear when deadlines keep on truckin’ at me.
Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory describes how people will go to great lengths and expend copious amounts of mental effort to justify irrational behavior [1]. Or, as it applies to me, how I try to convince myself not to do my homework when I know I’m going to struggle.
[2]
Figure 1. Accurate Depiction of My Time in College
- “You can pass without doing this assignment. It’s not that important.”
Except, it really is. I watched my grade drop a whole letter for missing a day of class. My grade will be abolished if I don’t do this assignment. This is me trying to change my own attitude to avoid doing something that I might struggle with or find unpleasant.
- “It’s not every day your brother and his pregnant wife come to town. Go hang out, you can finish this before you go to bed.”
If I don’t do this now, I won’t do it then. This could also very easily refer to how infrequent I find time to do any sort of activity that I still probably do far more often than I should. This is me trying to reduce my sense of perceived choice in the matter, to soften the “inevitable” blow from when I quit.
- “I don’t care if I do poorly in this class, I just need to pass.”
But I do care. I care so deeply, because this class will affect my GPA, which is in a very impressionable place right now. I need to do well in this class, so my GPA doesn’t tank, so I can get a good job, and I won’t be destitute, or stuck with a job that I hate because it’s the best I could do with my garbage transcript. This is a reduction of the importance of this assignment.
- “I’ll just take a twenty minute break to play Jackbox with the house, and then I’ll come right back.”
We both know it’s not going to be just twenty minutes. This isn’t a negotiation, it doesn’t work like that. I am trying to change my perception of taking a “short” break, but I’ve spent enough time caught up on [insert any mobile app here] to know that it’s never as short as you want it be.
And here I am, at the end of this assignment that I dreaded doing for weeks. Finished.
Works Cited
[1] S. Kassin, S. Fein and H. Markus, Social Psychology, Cencage Learning, 2013.
[2] J. Clear, "Procrastination: A Brief Guide on How to Stop Procrastinating," [Online]. Available: https://jamesclear.com/procrastination. [Accessed 27 February 2019].
