By Michael “Boots” Osborn

The one thing that most people don’t understand about procrastination, is that when you procrastinate, it doesn’t mean you don’t complete the assignment. To many people’s surprise, a real procrastinator actually knows how to manage his time efficiently. Like from the cartoon “Dexter’s Laboratory” when Dexter goes off to college. Everyone at the college says “Party now, study later!” Dexter doesn’t understand the concept and can’t study when everyone’s partying and starts partying when everyones starts studying. In this story, the college students present perfect procrastination. They know how to party as long as they can, but still allow themselves enough time to study for their tests.
From the dictionary: Procrastination is to put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness or to postpone or delay needlessly. I will take this definition apart to help describe the ways of the procrastinator.
Obviously, “to put off doing something” requires something that needs to be done. There are many objectives and duties that need to be fulfilled, and us procrastinators have it in our code to not do it right away. We’ll watch television, play games, hang out with friends, or even read a book. Procrastination comes in many forms, but when it gets to that point when you can no longer complete the objective, then you can no longer call it procrastination. That is straight up not doing it.
“Especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness”. For us, it is a habit. Remember the story about Dexter, the college students knew exactly when they had to stop partying and start studying. An important part of procrastination is the ability to judge when to stop procrastinating and start the actual work. Duties that you have done before make procrastinating easy, because you know how long it takes to do that duty, enabling you to take full advantage of the “party” portion of your procrastination. This is also why you can’t just up and become a true procrastinator. You need to memorize how long certain objectives take in order to correctly procrastinate. Believe it or not, there’s an art to it. It takes an infinite amount of failures to perfect procrastination. When trying a new objective, it’s always best to play less than more. It’s better to have a little extra time when you’re done to organize your thoughts one last time, then to either not finish what you have to do, or having to rush through it and be sloppy.
“To postpone or delay needlessly”. Though I’d take out the needless part of it, because what’s the point of living without having fun? Yeah, yeah, I could do my work now and still have fun, but I’d probably have less fun.  I will say it again, and I’ll say it a thousand times, because most people probably still won’t understand, but it’s only postponing, not canceling. This one event in my senior year of high school kept getting postponed, and eventually got unofficially canceled. People said that, “oh no, we’re still going to do it”, but I knew the truth. It was too late and they failed at procrastination, and we would go with the year without the event. If we had had the event, I might be able to recall the name the darn event, but whatever. A procrastinated assignment is not one that is never done, it is one that is postponed or delayed. I remember my mother always complaining to me “don’t procrastinate, do it a little at a time, before it overwhelms you and you can’t do it”. And I’m like don’t worry mom, I know what I’m doing. One time I was playing on the computer and my mother said to me “Hey, do you have any homework?” I replied  “Yeah, I only got a paper due in a week or so for the African-Native-American Trail project.” She responded “You better start that soon, don’t wait until the last minute,” I shrugged and continued with my game. I didn’t even start the paper until the day it was due. I skipped half the day of school, but I got an award for the paper. This shows how I didn’t judge my time well enough, but even though I did do it last minute, it didn’t make my paper any worse. Obviously every now and then I’ve misjudged the time span and I’ve done a crappy job on a paper or project, but practice makes perfect.
Now, even though you might not start procrastinating – don’t start now if you haven’t already been doing it. It’s actually hard to master, and it’s probably better if you keep the to the way you’ve been doing it. Those who are proud procrastinators, I hope you do take something from this, for it will help you out in school and life. Many mock the way of the true procrastinator, but wear your status proudly. Like from that Spongebob episode, yell out “I’m ugly and I’m proud!” Except don’t say that and say “I’m a procrastinator and I’m proud!” Let us true procrastinators march out and show others our way, the fun way.