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Robert Steinkraus
Dr. Guenzel
ENC 1101-0114
24 November 2014
Final Draft

Procrastination at its Finest

It is eleven o clock on a mid-November Tuesday night, and I am writing a work shop
draft due in eight hours. The rough draft must be comprised of fifteen hundred words analyzing
my writing process. Currently, I am refreshing my Tumblr feed and listening to music in one ear
while conversing with my suitemates. What was that? An email notification? Might as well
check it due to my curiosity of which social networking site I am receiving a notification from. I
have multiple social networking sites that I receive various notifications form throughout the day
After realizing it was just a follow from an EDM promoter I remembered my task at hand,
completing a fifteen-hundred word essay due in less than eight hours. Simple right? Maybe this
is not the most logical approach to writing a college level essay; but when it comes to it, I write
my best under pressure.
It is the top of the ninth and my coach substitutes me in as a relief pitcher. The bases are
loaded and we have no outs against our rival team, the Yankees. This was the final game of our
seven game post-season tournament preceding an undefeated season. We were pitted against the
Yankees who were also undefeated in their league, it was literally the game of the year. This is
where I learned to act, not crack under pressure. It was my duty to hold the Yankees at a negative
point deficit, and ultimately maintain our undefeated record. I finished the inning with ten

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pitches; nine of which were strikes, and one was a foul tip. I did not crack under the pressure,
and this is where I learned to maintain composure when exposed to stressful things. Being
repeatedly exposed to such situations gave me an edge over a lot of athletes and even nonathletes. Not only did I maintain my composure under such great pressure, but I excelled; while
if not faced with the same situation I may not have done as well. The pressure caused me to be
more focused on the objective at hand. Baseball was not the only place I had to maintain
composure while faced with stressful situations, but in many aspects of daily life as well.
Throughout my academic career when preparing for tests, projects, quizzes, notes, and
essays; it seemed as though I always procrastinated. At first procrastination hindered me, and I
could not handle the hole I repeatedly dug myself into. I consistently waited until the last minute
and things would pile on and affect my extracurricular activities and my participation in them. If
I received a C or anything lower my dad would ground me. Things had to change. I rethought my
approach to schooling and compared it to that of pitching. How come I would not crack under
the pressure of competitive sports, but I would when faced with too much school work? Oddly
enough, I did not change my procrastination habits, but my grades increased. Opposite of the
students who prepare for testing and do assignments days and days in advance, I catch myself
procrastinating until the day before or even the day of. When faced with the pressure of the
possibly of failing a test due to lack of preparation, or failing a huge assignment such as an essay
or project, I sort of go into a tunnel vision mode. The test or assignment are the only things on
my mind once I shut out all of the distractions. Unfortunately, this could be hours before the due
date; hence now I am working on this essay at 2:13 a.m., when it is due in less than five hours.
In theory, I would have started and finished this paper in one or two sittings with
minimal distractions, but unfortunately this did not happen. This strategy was both efficient and

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inefficient to an extent. I found myself still dealing with multiple distractions including my
friends texting me asking me to hang out with them, and the many distractions of my dorm room.
I was hoping to be able to focus on the essay, and nothing else. Yes the pressure made me focus
more on the task at hand more thoroughly, but pressure can be stressful regardless of how you
deal with it. There were times where I wish I had in fact better prepared for this paper, but in the
end I finished by the deadline.
My writing process is simple; I rid myself of all distractions, by doing them of course,
and then when it is time to crack down, I crack down. This morning I woke up knowing I had a
fifteen-hundred word essay due the next morning, and frankly I knew I would not start until that
night. Of course, I wish I had started earlier so such things would not burden my mind at the
crack of dawn, but as stated earlier, I work best under pressure. Throughout the day I
occasionally thought of things I could write about but nothing came to mind. I went to work and
did not pay much attention to the paper I had to write that night. After work I went to class and
began to plan when I would actually start writing this paper. While keeping in mind I had
practice at six; that I was going to the gym at eight, and also I had a mandatory floor meeting at
10:15. I was hoping to work on my paper after the gym, but there was hardly anytime between
the gym and my floor meeting I had to attend. After the floor meeting my suitemates and I
grabbed some food before heading back to the dorm. This is when I decided I would begin to
work on my essay. It was perfect timing, I got all of my things done I needed to, released extra
energy I had at practice and the gym, and I was well-fed. I sat down in my suitemates room;
which was occupied by both suitemates, my suitemates girlfriend, and my roommate. It was at
this moment I realized I only had eight hours to complete the task of writing a fifteen-hundred
word essay, and this was the kind of pressure I needed. I threw in some headphones and put on a

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high BPM, beats per minute, Pandora station and wrote. I began writing and realized I had no
clue what I was talking about. I really regretted sleeping through the Monday class I had
discussing the topic at hand. I went back to my outline, which was very poorly written, and
reread my professors comments. He convinced me to read over my peers outlines and I realized
that I really did not have a clue what to write about, but now I did. I thought about my writing
process as a whole and the current situation I was in. I realized my writing process began with
procrastinating to the point of which pressure makes it completely necessary to focus solely on
the paper and eliminating distractions. Unlike most people who just cut out the distractions
entirely, I rid myself of them by participating in the actual distractions. After this realization I
thoroughly thought of how I would structure this paper and what I would talk about, my
procrastination habits of course. I wrote nonstop for about an hour until I began to get restless. I
knew I would not be able to write to my full potential when I did not want to write. I decided a
quick break would be necessary. I grabbed my longboard and skated to the reflection pond. I
frequently visit the reflection pond late at night to gather my thoughts and just stare off into the
stars. It was here where I mentally planned out the rest of my paper. After thirty or so minutes of
this, I realized it would be best to get back and work on my paper. When I returned to the room
reread over what I already had written and made a few minor corrections. Rereading my paper is
something I frequently do while writing an essay. Every few sentences I will reread the whole
paragraph and even occasionally my whole paper, just to make sure there is some type of flow.
Eventually I finish this rough draft to some sort of satisfaction. Mainly due to the fact that I
finished it so last minute, but that is just how I normally confront writing an essay.
In this paragraph I described my writing process for this essay, and how I approached
it. Although I wrote it in such a way that I made this process sound successful, it was not

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entirely. I left out some distractions and some negative events that occurred during the writing of
my essay. This is indeed the approach I take in regard to nearly every school assignment I have,
and it always ends up this way. But, I convince myself it works to at least be somewhat optimistic
towards the completion of the assignment. Being optimistic is better than being pessimistic and
not even putting forth the effort required to effectively complete this essay. After writing the
rough draft of this paper I realized this process may not best suit me.
I feel as though ridding yourself of the distractions that can deter your writing is key to
writing efficiently. Also the actual situation I put myself into requires me to grind and
overcompensate for lost time. Procrastinating is a part of my everyday life, and a negative that I
turned positive. The pressure and stress I acquire puts me in overdrive mode where I work more
efficiently and effectively. Throughout life I have learned to cope with stress and pressure
effectively, and procrastination puts me into that kind of environment.
After completing this essay I realized many things. Of those many things, one is that my
writing process is not as simple as I let on. After speaking with my ENC-1101 professor, he made
me re-evaluate my process. Was it really as easy as I put on? Did I actually rid myself of all
distractions? Did I not feel under any type of negative pressure? These were some of the points I
raised in my paper that actually affected me negatively. I found myself hit with writers block,
numerous distractions, and under pressure. I still completed my essay, just not to the
expectations I had for myself. Hopefully in upcoming papers I can modify my writing process to
be more effective and not revert back to my preparation and approach I took while writing this
essay.