Because I procrastinate, I feel like a hypocrite when I tell college students not to. In the summer session now in progress, my students must write research papers, and knowing that procrastination would rear its lazy head and cause me to postpone grading all those papers, I announced that the assignment was due the following Monday.
The groans I got could have emerged from the darkest, most miserable corners of hell. Attempting to assuage their agony, I shared my mother’s do-the-hard-part-first philosophy with them. She always told me to analyze hard problems beforehand, and undertake the difficult phases of their solution first. Then, because the hard parts are done, the undone easy parts become even easier.
Speaking for his classmates, one student said, “But there are no easy parts to writing a research paper.” So, I tried quoting Mark Twain: “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
“Why, that’s nothing more than your mom’s advice worded differently,” another student railed. “How do you expect us to read about our chosen topics, make notes, follow citation rules, avoid plagiarism, and submit an acceptable composition in such a short time period?”
I’ve always encouraged students to be self-assertive, to stand up for themselves when they feel they are right, because I know that when they enter their chosen careers, those who don’t, those who go along with the flow, will be stepping stones for others who know that mutual outcome is a fallacy and that competition is the only honorable, right way to climb to the top — in college and the business world. But now I began thinking that I might have encouraged these students to be too self-assertive.
Then, I remembered something I read about why Abraham Lincoln had been successful as a defense attorney. In an interview, he stated that before each case, he devoted eighty-five percent of his time to preparing rebuttals to all possible arguments by the opposing attorney, and used the remainder of the time for developing his own arguing points.
Plan A flopped, so I came up with Plan B. Each class would choose a hot topic in the news that is impacting their lives now, or might in the future, and prepare opposing theses (opinions) about it. One half of the class would research one thesis; their opponents, the other. Then, the collected pro and con data would be interwoven in such a way that each side would have to rebut documented arguing points set forth by the other side, as did Abraham Lincoln.
Motivation overcame inertia, and converted it to momentum. Plan B caught on like a wildfire.
As Confucius once said, ““Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated,” which is what I did. Plan A didn’t work, but I tried to make it work … when all I had to do was go to Plan B.
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled The Jaybird Tales.
Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).
