I found these quite amusing. I did a lot of procrastinating. Perhaps the worst was in third year of a Canadian Lit course and I only had to come up with a topic on a certain date but was going to class without one. (Well, Jim and I were going together...I'll blame it on that) I mentioned I didn't have a topic (You lost lots of points if you didn't have one and also lost mega points for every hour the essay was late...diabolical professor) and a guy beside me said do "Imagery in P.K.Page" and so I did and it turned out to be a really interesting topic. Of course I did it the night before and only got it in on time because my room-mate, Beth, agreed to type it for me and she only got it done on time because I set the clock ahead two hours. Ah...student days.
Some examples:
“When I was studying for/writing my Ph.D. exams, I ran out of things to clean/organize in my house, so I adopted a 12-week-old puppy. I love her, but this is without a doubt the single worst idea I’ve had in my entire life.
THEN after I passed said exams, I started a novel just so that I could procrastinate on it by writing my dissertation. There is no way I would have finished my dissertation if I were not using it to avoid writing the novel.
Now I have a big dumb dog, a dissertation, and maybe half a novel.” —Kellie
“I once moved to Paris so I could justify taking longer with an essay because ‘I’m working on it in Paris.’ (I stayed in Paris for months, experienced a total emotional breakdown, did not start the essay.) I was in a very rational place — it was about UFOs and the American southwest. Then while I was there I was like ‘…but maybe it’s also about Paris?’ It was not also about Paris.” —Brian Phillips, author of Impossible Owls
“I once moved to Paris so I could justify taking longer with an essay because ‘I’m working on it in Paris.’ (I stayed in Paris for months, experienced a total emotional breakdown, did not start the essay.) I was in a very rational place — it was about UFOs and the American southwest. Then while I was there I was like ‘…but maybe it’s also about Paris?’ It was not also about Paris.” —Brian Phillips, author of Impossible Owls
“I once (and by once, I mean this past week) picked up an entirely new hobby — cross-stitch — to avoid writing a paper abstract for a conference. I purchased a cross stitch kit on Amazon, waited two days for it to arrive, designed my own pattern (!!! why !!!) and stitched the whole thing. Then I wrote the whole abstract in 48 minutes, starting 49 minutes before the deadline to submit it.
But I really like cross stitch, it turns out.” —Katie
