Confessions of a Procrastinator

In a recent interview, Rebekah discussed with us her struggles and difficulties with writing.

“I am a procrastinator of the first degree,” she claimed. She was quick to reassure us that it was not that she dislikes doing the work. There is something in the massive amounts of energy required to start a piece, which fills her subconscious with dread. Her conscious, of course, is too busy distracting itself to notice that a project is being put off. It takes so much thought before she can even start that she needs to create a clear picture of where she is going. After that she somehow needs to jump-start the creative process with a small shot of excitement to launch herself over the anxiety it causes. For her, that anxiety is all but insurmountable. That conflict of procrastination and anxiety is enemy number one in Rebekah’s academic writing career.

 Once she has gotten over the hurdle of starting, Rebekah is also a perfectionist of sorts. The combination is deadly in classes where late papers are not allowed at all. To fight these tendencies, she has to uproot her entire way of living life and everyday turns into a battle she might not win.

Her real strength is that she is still trying after countless failures and after temptation to give up battling these enemies. As far as the actual writing goes, she has a feel for what order to put ideas in and what makes the most sense. When she is trying, she knows how to put words together to make it interesting and creates a vivid image. To be perfectly honest, while she knows she can write well, she doesn't have as good a view of her strengths as she does of her weaknesses.

To be concise, weaknesses:

• Procrastination
• Anxiety
• Perfectionism
• Digging deep to analyze
• Time enough to analyze properly
• Time enough to edit and revise 
• Tendency toward cliché ideas and phrases

Strengths: 

• Doggedly trying
• Macro editing
• Beautiful sounds and combinations of words
• Voice

The most recent project she completed was not a literary analysis, but a collection and analysis of folklore primary sources for American Folklore (ENGL 392), taught by Jill Rudy. The paper, including the collection, ended up being 45 pages long, though the analysis was only 8 pages. It took her hours and hours and was the source of many anxiety-ridden days and nights while working on it. It ended up being very, very late. After completing it, however, she felt a lot of pride in accomplishing something so long and so hard. On top of that, she discovered that she actually really enjoyed working on it as well.