Today was reporting day at school. That means the last day before the school reports for the semester get printed. In reality though it means the last day for me to finish marking all those hundreds of essays, posters, oral presentations and reading journals that have piled up on my desk with the intention of “I’ll mark it later.”

I knew I wasn’t ready for today. I panicked on Friday and spent my two free periods, lunch and some time after school finishing off marking Year 10 exams. Then exhausted I carried an armful of year 9 essays home with me with the intention of marking them ‘sometime’ on the weekend. 9pm last night I realised I hadn’t done a damn thing about them and tried in vain to get started. By the time I started marking the fourth essay I was drifting off to sleep, exhausted from having worked a 9 hour shift at my other job.

Why do I do this to myself? I always have the best laid plans to be organised but other, more important things, always seem to get in the way. In the end I did get all the essays marked and got my marks into the computer in time, but that meant allowing one of my classes to have a ‘reading lesson’ in the library while I frantically finished off the last ten essays in the pile.

The funny thing is I feel fantastic now knowing that it is all out of the way and my next lot of marking isn’t until after the holidays. Why don’t I get organised in time so I can still have this feeling of relief and happiness, without the feelings of stress and that dreaded “Oh my God! I am never going to get this done in time!”

Someone once told me that the reason we leave things to the last minute is because we thrive on that feeling of panic. It makes us feel alive for those few frantic hours where we wonder “Will I make it?”. It is the closest most of us will come to having an emergency. It’s our Bruce Willis moment, we’re looking at the bomb ticking down to zero, not sure if we should cut the red or the blue wire. One is going to save us the other is going to blow us sky high and end the movie pretty quick.

I could have done without the drama this week. Next time be more organised….I’ll believe it when it happens!

Image by Pragmagraphr (flikr)