2002 ~ 2006 |
THE PIONEERS
Deadlines, procrastination,
excuses and being last-minute
Phoon Chi Ho
Cracking at the Crackhouse KL. (photo by Fiona Reutens) ▶
No.
I assure you.
28
One thing
procrastination
does to you,
without you
noticing,
is that it pins
you into
a corner,
forcing you
do things
at the last-
minute and
you end up
coming up
with shoddy,
unconvincing
work.
The title or my submission date have nothing to do
with this article.
When Half-Prof. Yeoh Seng Guan Facebook
Messengered me to contribute a word or two for this,
errr thingy, I wasted no time cracking head to come
up with an article that connects us all Commies.
And I do believe we’re still called The Commies. Gosh,
we used to call ourselves the Commies because well,
we were studying communications (whatever that
means) and we also learned a thing or two (crap,
I just used ‘or two’ for the second time in as many
sentences so that might incur some form of point
deduction in the overall evaluation of the language
used in this essay. Why do I keep saying essay
whenever I type more than 100 words, in which case,
this is the 133rd word so I think, I CAN call this an
essay. Word 145) about Karl Marx and his antipesto.
So, I think, that’s the reason why, I think (crap, there it
is again) we called ourselves the Commies.
Where was I? Oh, yes.
I thi… I guess, by now, you might have gathered that
we Commies (or what you might call “us” depending
on when you got yourselves enrolled into this degree)
don’t only commit the carnal sin of procrastination
at the “life” level – you know, laundry, semester fees,
unwanted kids – but also, at the “mental” level.
I blame the flow of the syllabus in our degree that
exposed us to so many ideas in such a short span
of time that only a few of us were able to summon
enough focus to compartmentalize each idea. Imagine
going to a varsity party and throwing words out like
“interpellation”, “bourgou… bourgeois” and “Jean
Baudrillard” while explaining those thoughts at length,
bibliography included, with a cup of beer in one hand
and a glass of champagne in the other. That takes
a lot of brain cells. I mean 4.0 GPA amount of brain
cells, Or 3.75 at the very least.
But what I’m trying to say is, excuses are definitely
the one thing that connects as all Commies.
One can’t live a whole life without indulging in the nifty
craft of conjuring excuses on a whim. It takes a lot of
creativity and confidence. I mean, just try to remember
our friends who used to hand in their essays and
assignments BEFORE deadlines (show-offs).
They are the most boring bunch. Not an ounce
of creativity and/or confidence can be detected
whenever we common Commies happen to go
through the unfortunate tragedy of engaging in a
conversation with one of these freaks of nature.
I mean, what sort of mundane life path had they
chosen to walk for their entire university careers
that they actually had sufficient time to complete
their essays and assignments BEFORE deadlines?
Don’t they have varsity parties to go to?
I love those varsity parties. Hey, when is a better time
to exercise what you’ve learned about “interpellation”,
“bourgo… bourgeois” and “Jean Baudrillard” other
than in a party setting where everyone is obligated
to be cooler than their fake selves in class and/or
tutorials just hours before, while boasting their alcohol
tolerance? But, who am I to be talking about these
decadent parties. I’ve only ever gotten invited to one
party and not the other 257 (half of which was initiated
by the Christian Fellowship Movement). However,
I vaguely remember spouting some smart words and
learning I shouldn’t mix my alcohol.