Every single year that I’ve been in college, I try to promise myself that I will stop procrastinating.

After about a month into each year, I end up giving up on myself and caving into to the tempting ways of procrastination.

I’ll make a schedule to do pushed back assignments knowing that I’ll never follow it. Even when I’m free, I will do whatever I can to fill up any sort of free time that I have just so I can make excuses as to why I didn’t do my homework.

When I finally bring my self to do my assignments, I feel like every few words that I write justifies an hour break. But when I end up being awake all the through the night before the assignment is due, I can’t help but having so much regret and anger towards myself.

This process always repeats itself. This isn’t foreign to college students, it happens to be something that we know all too well.

We can easily say that procrastinating is a result of pure laziness, but lately I can’t help but think that there is a lot more behind it. What does procrastination really mean?

In a recent meeting that I had with one of Mercy’s pact mentor’s, I felt that I might have discovered the root of this seemingly  never ending problem.

While procrastination is seen as just a common bad habit, if it’s severe enough, it may be the surface to a lot of underlying issues that a person might be going through.

As students, we’re all in school for the same reason- to achieve our goals. We wouldn’t waste countless hours studying and worrying if attaining our dreams were as easy as picking leaves off of a branch.

But that’s just the thing, our dreams and goals aren’t easy. We often second guess ourselves because of the fear of success and the large amount of responsibility that it brings.  Seeing how much work it takes just to get through school pales in comparison to the amount of work it takes to become and remain successful.

Another issue that is common that most people wouldn’t admit to is the lack of motivation. It’s sounds good to be passionate about what you want to achieve after college, but when you are overwhelmed with constant assignments and deadlines with school, it is easy to lose sight of that.

These happen to be the underlying issues that I’ve been dealing with.  Now that I can say that I’m truly aware of that, I have started making some small efforts to break this cycle such making lists of my goals and really looking into improving my time management goals.

The most important thing to realize is that procrastination is an aid to keep you in your comfort zone.  No one can ever prosper in their comfort zone. As scary as thought might be facing your underlying issues and fears can be the most exciting and liberating feeling.

You also must remember that this is a common problem which means that there are many people who you can relate to with this. It all starts with you.