It’s that time of the semester again folks. The last few days before finals, when every semester-long assignment is due, with little time left to do it. But you know what’s worse than all our piled-up assignments? Procrastination.

Procrastinating is a college student’s worst nightmare. Why? Because it adds to already stressed lives. What’s worse is that it’s completely self-inflicted.

Rather than sitting down and finishing an assignment ahead of schedule, a student may choose to put it off to the last possible minute, which leaves less time for all of the other assignments we have to complete.

Procrastination sneaks up on you. Imagine this, it’s time to write an important essay that requires research. You turn on your laptop and open up a new Internet tab. If you use Yahoo, MSN, or Bing, you will see the articles that are currently popular at the time.

You see an article that catches your eye, you click on it. After all, it’s just one teensy article, how can it hurt? You can do research later.

Suddenly you glance at the clock and an hour has gone by. You have read dozens of articles, and maybe some of those articles led to videos and you felt the need to share an discuss the article or video with a friend.

Another hour passes by. Next thing you know, five hours have gone by, and your paper is no closer to being done. You lost those hours and you can’t get that time back.

Why do we procrastinate? According to a survey done by the American Psychological Association, 70 percent students consistently procrastinate throughout the school year. Each student has a different reason for avoiding an assignment.

Some reasons involve the need to work on another assignment with an earlier deadline. Those students with jobs may not have the to work on it, others simply had better things to do, like watching a favorite TV show was on and they didn’t want to miss. The reasons are endless.

In addition, we assume that even though we are putting off an assignment, we’ll have enough time to sit down and do it later on, which is not always the case.

According to psychologicalscience.org, we put off assignments for our future self to handle. We do this because we believe “we’re trying to regulate our current mood and think our future self will be in a better state.”

But it’s understandable, not many people want to complete something that, in the long run, doesn’t seem to matter.

But finishing something on time and effectively is important. It’s not good to fall behind in assignments, as it will cause you more anxiety later.

While you may never fully be able to stop procrastinating, you may be able to stop procrastinating on everything, which is a step in the right direction.

According to collegeview.com, procrastination may be something you’ll just have to live with, but you can effectively combat it and finish your work if you approach it in a different way.

CollegeView offers some helpful advice on how to fight procrastination. Assessing the task, it suggests that you split it up into sections, and then divide and conquer.

And finding a good study partner and eliminating distractions can help. A partner can help you stay motivated, and it is easier to concentrate without distractions.

In addition to those tips, CollegeView also says taking a reasonable approach, scheduling appropriate time for assignments, and completing the beginning steps for an assignment will help you stave off your procrastination problem.

Chronic procrastination is difficult to deal with. But with so little time left this semester, it’s important for us to buckle down and get things done.