Procrastination and My College Experiences

Procrastination, and my college experiences

According to the article (Magazine: Journal do- Genetic Psychology, December 1999), procrastination is referred as the act of needlessly delaying a task until the point of some discomfort. This is a behavior problem that many adults experience on a regular basis. In this paper I will be talking about two studies that researched about how procrastination hits students. It will also talk about ways to put an end to procrastination and give stories about people who overcame procrastination and achieved their goals. Toward the end I will talk about how procrastination effected me in my first semester.

Procrastination Research

In the first article (Magazine: Journal do- Genetic Psychology, December 1999), they decided to do a study about locus of control of reinforcement. This refers to the way students think about their papers or research. If external they do not care about the papers and do other things. If they are internal they will do their paper really fast, since their desire comes from having the paper done. In previous research they have found that there is no relation between locus of control and academic procrastination. They have also found that procrastinators had a greater external locus of control than non-procrastinators did. They say that procrastinators were more likely than non-procrastinators to have better success on exams due to the “cramming” that they do. All of this was about to change when scientists decided to do the present studies about procrastination. In these present studies they found out that the students with internal control expectancies would procrastinate more than those with external control expectancies. They found out that the students would procrastinate more when given a hard project than when they are given an easy project.

In the same article they did another study, this time 42 undergraduates were enrolled in two psychology courses. They were to complete assignments to see who were more likely to procrastinate. When the results were finished they found out that the mean for gender, meaning male or female, was not significantly different. As they expected, the students with internal control began assignments earlier than those students with external control expectancies. The students with internal locus of control took fewer days to return the assignments than those with external locus of control. Most importantly of all, they came with the conclusion that procrastination involves much more than poor time-management skills.

Stopping Procrastination