Top 5 Procrastination Activities to Avoid Working on Your Senior Thesis

All of your Harvard journey has culminated in this completely optional task which you could have –not done--, but instead of taking the easy way out and enjoying senior spring, you decided to commit yourself to about 6 months of utter suffering.

Your MacBook is staring you down; Microsoft Word is shouting at you, “Look at all these blank pages you haven’t filled!” You begin to think to yourself. C’mon, you can do it. You can tackle that paper; it’s just roughly the length of 30 response papers in that one class you took Freshman Year. You cry. Where has Freshman Year gone? You get nostalgic. I miss the Harvard Yard. I miss Annenberg. I miss Freshman Dean Dingman’s corny jokes.

You peruse old Facebook pictures and remember that your time at Harvard does have purpose. You steel yourself and make a commitment to begin working.

But then your brain realizes: your room is a mess. You certainly can’t get any work done in these conditions, so the only way to make sure you can successfully write your thesis is to complete a laundry list of tasks that MUST be taken care of before you can sit down and churn out the most important document of your college career.

In order to give you a glimpse into what senior spring at Harvard is like/give you a preemptive guide for the journey you might undertake as a senior here at the College, I’ve compiled a (somewhat) comprehensive list of procrastination activities that are mission critical if you’re ever going to be able to successfully write that first chapter.

5. Clean your entire room. Vigorously.

There’s a pile of dirty clothes next to your bookcase. Half empty water bottles on your bedside table. A trashcan full of tissues (from that return-to-campus head cold you had) and a banana peel from the Currier dining hall. A bunch of sticky notes all covering your desk. Your fridge still has that thai food from two weeks ago. Come to think of it, your bookshelf isn’t color-coded. Nor is it alphabetically arranged. There’s dust on the window sill. Your carpet has little bits of paper on top of it. Your bed posts could use a thorough polishing. Your pictures on the wall are slightly crooked. When was the last time you sanitized the door handles? The whole room has the faint smell of sweat, tears, worry, and defeat.

You decide it’s spring cleaning time