a cautionary tale by isabel daniel

My mother has always told me I am very self motivated. I never really knew what that meant, because I am one of the least motivated people I have ever met and I refuse to do anything until the very last minute. I am in a codependent relationship with procrastination. The exact moment I finally realized the truth of my mother’s words came my senior year of high school when I was six weeks and 12 pages into a research paper that I was writing because I thought it would be funny.

     One thing I have always known to be true about myself is that I am fascinated by the lives of people older than me, specifically my teachers. I am also very observant of irrelevant details. This meant that when my AP Government teacher seemed to only wear the same few shirts week after week I started to joke to my friends that he only owned five shirts. Which, of course, made me want to investigate further to see if I could statistically prove my theory. Finally, being in AP Statistics and AP Research would have practical uses in my life after suffering through the classes all year. Obviously I had no better way to use my time than to spend over a month recording what he wore every day, writing a research paper about it, and then giving it to him.

     Because I am a horrible procrastinator, as previously mentioned, I waited until the night before my last class to write the paper, complete with an abstract, methods section, tables and all. Sitting in bed with my laptop, I tried to put a humorous spin on the theory of decision fatigue as it relates to getting dressed, and on a chi squared goodness of fit test that I no longer understand how to do. Mere moments after I created the title page my instincts told me to quit, my laziness willing me to avoid doing this unnecessary work that I had absolutely no reason to complete. But no matter how compelling the thought of giving up was, my stubbornness was too strong. I had not come this far for nothing.

     After working for hours on the assignment I had given myself, I concluded that he did actually own more than five shirts, which was relieving, but not by much. In five weeks he wore a whopping grand total of six shirts.

     When the time to give him my paper finally rolled around I suddenly became very nervous, because, essentially, I spent 2,000 words insulting his fashion choices. But I had probably worked harder on that paper than I had on any other assignment all year, so I pushed my worries away and handed it in. While reading he did not seem amused, but rather marked my mistakes, as if I had turned it in for a real grade. I was sort of heartbroken at this response, because we had a very close relationship and expected him to find it funny, but it turns out that this was his way of coping with reading my observations on his wardrobe. The reason he wore so few shirts was because they were the only ones that still fit him and he didn’t want to admit it to himself that he gained weight and needed to buy more. Sometimes laziness should win.