As an elementary and high school student I developed a bad habit of waiting until the last minute to complete assignments. At various times I considered starting earlier, but I decided against the extra effort since I was able to get As and A-minuses when starting things at the last minute. In college I had to work harder to maintain good grades but I still left paper writing until the last minute, typically making an outline two days before a deadline and writing the paper the evening before the deadline, priding myself on the fact that I never had to stay up all night working.
These tactics worked. My high school and undergraduate GPAs were the same and I got into grad school, where I ran into problems. As you probably know, writing a course paper in graduate school takes a lot more work than writing a five-page undergraduate paper. Obviously, I couldn’t start the day before a deadline, but despite my good intentions to start working on papers early in the semester, I ended up waiting until a few weeks remained. A few times I even stayed up all night.
Then came the dissertation, which was obviously unlike anything I’d previously written. After setting deadlines for each chapter with my advisor, I found myself using my grad school paper-writing tactics with each one. This time, I missed a few deadlines. Thankfully, my advisor understood how to motivate me and the chapters eventually got done, then revised, and then submitted to my committee members. When I originally set the “complete draft” deadline I was sure that I would be able to meet it. In retrospect, however, the fact that I met this deadline without substantially changing my poor writing habits is surprising. Until now, my ability to do “okay” writing in a short period of time has been both a blessing and a curse. As I’ve gotten older, though, the “blessing” aspect has been largely supplanted by the “curse” aspect. Sine I’ll soon be working toward tenure it seems that a change in work habits may be in order.
Memoirs of a SLACer 