Procrastination: Maybe It CAN Be Good!

For my Humanities class the teacher is one of those teachers who puts the students into groups and makes the groups do class presentations. Today was our group's turn for our presentation. We were allowed to pick what topic we wanted, so naturally I picked Science, Technology and Medicine.

Well, we got the names of the other people in our group last Monday. Our group was the second to present. On Wednesday last week I looked around for the other kids in my group. There were two. Only one was there. So I went up to him after class and asked when he wanted to get together for the project. He offhandedly mentioned, "Oh, I was thinking next Monday sometime." And then left. Our other group member wasn't there.

I'm not really a procrastinator, and wasn't too fond of waiting until Monday to do such a big presentation that's due Wednesday, but I figured I'd try and relax and realize that we'd hopefully get a good grade anyway. I made up my mind to ask on Friday (it's a Mon, Wed, Fri class) if maybe we could meet a bit sooner in case it took us longer than we expected.

Except neither of my two group members showed up to class on Friday. I had no way to get their names and they didn't respond to email. I was kind of freaking out.

So Monday I went to class and thankfully they were both there. Laurel asked me if I wanted to meet Tuesday. I asked her if there was any way we could meet today (Monday) but she said she was busy. The only time she could meet was Tuesday. So we asked the guy I had spoken with the week before and he said Tuesday would only work for him if it was at 3pm. I agreed to it. Since it was the only time the two of them could meet. I actually had an appointment to meet with another teacher at 3:15 on Tuesday, but fortunately he let me reschedule for another time. I also had somewhere to be at 5:45, so I was hoping it wouldn't take a long time.

Well, we met at 3 on Tuesday. We divided up parts (I took the medical section) and figured out how we'd do the powerpoint, etc. Laurel said we could email her our parts written kind of in powerpoint note form and she'd have her husband turn it into a real powerpoint presentation.

The presentation was finished by her and her husband at 9 this morning. Class started at 10:15. I didn't even get the chance to look at the presentation since she hadn't finished it until late and I didn't have a chance to get to a computer. But I had my notes and she said she kept it in order and put the pictures in the right places. I trusted her. She made me go first because she said she thought I was smart (baha) and could start it off well.

So nervously I began the presentation. Surprisingly enough it was made very well. I kind of wished she'd made it so the words slid in one line at a time, but she was in a hurry. I had offered to create my own part of the powerpoint, but she said it would be easier to just send the notes because if I made it, they wouldn't be able to just copy and paste it into the other powerpoints (which is true, I don't know anyone who's found a way to combine powerpoints into one).

So it ended up going amazingly well. I was surprised how much stuff I said that the teacher actually knew and agreed with or reiterated and referred to later in class. He kept going back to stuff I had talked about and it made me feel much better every time. Especially considering the only guidance I had was "talk about Islamic medicine and it's contributions to the world." Pretty darn broad subject. Thank goodness it went well!

I still hate procrastinating. Unless it's something that I'm absolutely dreading I tend to try and get it done ASAP so I don't have to think about it. I get really nervous and tense when I'm procrastinating. But then again maybe I should relax more and be more okay with it. It worked out, didn't it?