COVID-19 Pandemic Has Made College Students Lazy

Pushing off assignments until the last minute has always been a part of college life. We all know procrastination will never help us, most of the time pushing something off until later will make the situation worse, and the lockdown just added fuel to the fire. 

Procrastination can be caused by several things like stress, anxiety and depression. But when we let our present self call the shots, our future self suffers because of it. 

After the initial shock of the COVID-19 pandemic wore off, everything started to have its own schedules and systems. People isolated themselves, classes were online and meetings met over Zoom rather than in-person. There was lots of flexibility if things were not completed on time.

However, in the early days of the pandemic people struggled with the exhaustion of adjusting to the changes and restrictions caused by the virus, and this led to more stress and procrastination. People began working and studying from home which made it difficult to differentiate between workspace and relaxation space. 

During this period there were countless articles, blog posts and information telling us to pretend we were going to school or into the office. People thought getting ready for the day would help them be able to separate themselves from work and personal life while staying at home. But by staying home for such a long time we fell into a never-ending loop of laziness.

Now we no longer have as much time alone and people have been overcompensating by staying up later doing things they want to do rather than things they should be completing. After spending so long trying to avoid people there has been an effort to decrease the number of in-person meetings or at least make them shorter. People have learned how to either make in-person meetings shorter or over Zoom, or all the information will be condensed into an email.

Everything has been moved online. Now, answers to tests, assignments and projects are given to us in a couple of clicks. Our diplomas are only a Google search away. Now that classes have returned to in-person and we are expected to take midterms on paper, we are struggling to drop our routine laziness.

COVID-19 has created a global mental health crisis. People became accustomed to having flexible submission dates and now that the world has relatively returned to what it was before lockdown they are suffering the consequences of it.