I remember many moons ago, part of our graduation requirements was to complete a big project and presentation towards the end of our junior year (grade/year 11). For 90% of the student body, you had to present on what career or trade you wanted to go into after graduation, and it honestly seemed like a fun time. People would display their trifolds in the library and cafeteria, have district administrators tour around the school, and give interactive presentations for the staff and students to experience. One girl who wanted to be a chef ended up making chocolate fondue for everyone at her station. Another guy who wanted to be a chemist did some weird but cool-looking reaction that resulted in a (small and controlled!) fireball.
I was part of the other 10%. I don’t know what everyone in that 10% had to do, because included in that group were the students who could not complete a traditional project for one reason or another, but I also know it included me and the other gifted students because we were explicitly told it had to be a service learning project where we tried to make an impact on the community.
I hated it
Now don’t get me wrong. Fundamentally, I think service learning is wonderful. And I used to pride myself on how many hours I could volunteer during my college years to ‘give back to the community’ even if it usually meant cleaning up vomit and broken liquor bottles from the streets in front of the frat houses on Sunday morning after a rager weekend. I think the world would be a better place if people in general had the ability to give more altruistically of their time and resources to support others. But teenager me wasn’t thinking about altruism. Teenager me was jealous that all the ‘normal’ kids could talk about jobs that interested them while I was being punished for being smart.
Little did I know at the time that my brain was already rebelling against the perceived ‘unfairness’ of the situation.
Long story short, I trudged thru, but only until a certain point. I did the actual service. I made a PowerPoint and gave a speech about disaster preparedness and how we all need to make sure we have plans for fires and bad weather and active shooters in any situation. But we also needed to write an essay about it. I could not tell you the details of that essay, being over a decade ago. But I know it was big, and long, and writing it was the last thing I wanted to do. So I just…didn’t do it. Couldn’t do it. No matter how many times I sat at my computer and gazed into my screen, Word doc open, I could not muster the thoughts or will to type even the simplest of nonsense. It felt like a physical pain in my head and hands to even attempt. I began to loathe myself. Hate my existence. Spiral into that downward trajectory of doom and naysaying before finally giving up and walking away to do something, anything, else. Give yourself a 5 minute break, I’d say. And 5 minutes became 5 hours, became 5 days, became 5 weeks. The new semester started, class was done, and I still hadn’t completed the essay.
I should have been less shocked by the ‘F’ grade on my progress report, but as someone for whom academics was a breeze, if not entirely painless, I almost shit myself.
This wasn’t the first time I had procrastinated on a school assignment, but it was by far the most egregious error on an assignment most important up until that point. I was filled with shame and guilt. My reputation as an academic star, ruined. It didn’t help that the teacher for that class and I did not have complementary personalities, putting it lightly, so he (IMO) was more than happy to fail me, and the only reason I passed was because district and admin policy forced him to let me redo the assignment. I ended up typing an essay most plain yet adequate enough, and managed to scrape by with a C+ for the final grade, just enough to pass and not completely tank my grade point average or chances at university. Yet it would take TWO MORE MAJOR INCIDENTS, one in undergrad and the other in grad school, before I finally learned my lesson on procrastination. And even then, it’s still a struggle.
I don’t procrastinate because I enjoy being lazy or distracted. I procrastinate because doing the ‘thing’ feels more painful than literally anything else in the moment. It’s not laziness, it’s task avoidance. A beautiful combination of fear, sensory overload, and inability to concentrate, among others. I hate that I’m like this; that this is something I literally have to talk to myself about every single day, somehow muster the willpower, and even take medication to manage. Yet it is what it is. I can’t change it, so I need to learn to work with it. I’ve gotten better at it, but as evident by this recent issue with completing my HR paperwork for a new job, I’m still definitely struggling.
The world doesn’t care about our struggle, and that’s the worst part. You can try to explain how painful it is, how overwhelming and stressful doing the task versus not doing it leaves you. How even when you complete it, even if you do a good job with it, you’re left feeling drained and resentful, and a not-small part of you regrets doing it. “See, all you had to do was power through!” they’ll say. “Motivation doesn’t last, discipline is what gets you through the every day things.”
They never understand just how much it costs you to power through the every day things. Asking for that essay on a project I felt resentment for being assigned in the first place, when I did all the other parts already, was the straw that broke the camels back. It was too much.
They say a successful life is built on discipline and motivation. That motivation is good for the initial spark, but fleeting. That discipline, the hard grind, building habits is what gets you places.
They don’t understand that you can brush and floss your teeth for 20 years straight, skip one night because of a mood, and suddenly the habit is broken forever.
Habits do not stick with us.
Discipline does not stick with us. Motivation does not stick with us.
Please tell me what might stick with us. So I can stop avoiding my current essay.
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