GradHacking: Topic 1 Procrastination

Eric Riley March 10th

WELCOME

i post hacks to get you to graduation

with a little hard work and dedication

i’ll help you pass any class that you take on

that you take on 

hahaha

Before starting this post and sending it out to the world for everyone to read and create their own opinions I want to give a background on myself. My name is Eric, I’m a student at Gulf Coast State College just like most of you reading this post. I’m a year and a half into my bachelors degree but needless to say it hasn’t been easy to get where I am today. It’s taken a lot of trials and tribulations to learn what are some techniques that help me be successful in the classroom. With that being said I don’t expect everything I post to work for everyone but I hope it can help someone out there.

The first topic I want to cover out of the series I have lined up is procrastination. WE ALL DO IT, and if you don’t I tip my hat to you because it’s not easy balancing schedules to set times in advance to finish homework for the upcoming days or weeks in advance. I used to find myself the night before something was due cramming in the work to complete it on time. Coming down to the last minute at times to turning things in, or on a bad occasion turning it in late and then begging the professor to please take my late work because it’ll never happen again I promise. Hah. We all know that wasn’t true. The reality of it is life happens. People make mistakes. People have things come up, and some people including myself have trouble with time management.

When considering some of the strategic moves we can make to better our time management skills, here are the ones that worked for me. First is the canvas calendar, some people despise canvas, which at first I did myself. Not everyone enjoys change, and going from angel to canvas was definitely a big change. I encourage you to open your mind to what’s new because canvas does offer some features that can really help you in life and also in the classroom, but let me get back on topic of the calendar. Canvas offers a course calendar which allows students to view their work that needs to be done throughout the month and months to come. When I try to complete homework I try to do it a week in advance. I know this sounds crazy, but trust me if you start it early then two things great will happen for you. One is you have the possibility to get it done early, this means that during the week it’s due you have nothing to worry about. Two is if you start the work early and for some reason can’t finish it, you still have some time the upcoming week to continue working on it. So start early and have some time to relax, or start early and not have everything to do the week it’s due, or in some cases the day it’s due at 11:59. Also when completing work on canvas it give you a satisfying feeling, you do your work and then go back to the calendar only to find that it automatically put a line through the assignment you completed. This is like the feeling you get after completing a workout and you get to check it off your to do list. It just makes you feel like you accomplished something.

Which brings me to my next point. STAY AWAY FROM THE TO DO LIST ON THE CANVAS DASHBOARD. When signing on to canvas you’re brought straight to your dashboard to view your classes and your work that needs to be done, but there’s a catch. The to do list only shows you the assignments you need to complete for the week or upcoming week. I encourage you to take the time to look at the assignments, but then click on the course the assignments are for. 90% of the time the assignment will be included in a module which will have other work you need to complete inside of it. Whether that be something you need to read to complete the assignment or something you need to read in general just to help you in the class. Reading your book is important people! Just because you’re smart enough or think you’re smart enough to do the assignment without it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read it at all. Reading is knowledge, you will most likely learn something new when reading the textbooks assigned to us. They aren’t given to us well I shouldn’t say given to us, we pay an arm and a leg sometimes for books in school. They are assigned to us for a reason.

Looking on back on what we talked about I would like to highlight some of my main points on procrastination. First, is using the canvas calendar, it’s easy, it will help you stay organized, and for some of us that accomplishing feeling of the strike through the assignment that’s due. Second, stay away from the to do list on canvas because more times then not there’s more stuff you need to complete inside the module under the class the assignment is for. Last but not least, read your book. It’s important to take the time to read our books because in the end the book was assigned for a reason to help us learn more on the subject. Even if we feel we know everything there is about the subject you may surprise yourself and learn something new. Overall, procrastination happens, life happens, but hopefully these tips can help you fight back and stay on top of your homework. With hard work and dedication we can do anything we put our minds to. Finally I want to leave you all with a fun video on procrastination provided to us by the YouTube content creator Domics. This is a short animated film on how procrastination can consume our lives plus it’s funny so I hope you all enjoy it!

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