Each spring semester issue, a senior will reflect on an aspect of their experiences at Roseville High School. Guest Delaney Grimes writes the second installment of Letters from a Senior.

Time management has been interwoven into each of our lives since we were young.

In middle school these skills are put to the test, in high school we are coerced into mastering them through the relentless hours of work. It’s commonly believed that teachers are unaware of the fact their students have responsibilities outside of the their classroom.

The truth is, teachers are more than aware of this reality than they lead us to believe. The issue is that many of them expect that at this stage in the game, we have mastered our daily routines. We cannot avoid this controversy; our only option as students is to adapt to the rigor presented on our paths to educated lives, while avoiding failure.

A difficult task to take on, I agree, but a substantial element of achieving ideal time management is avoiding procrastination.  As teenagers, we tend to overestimate our abilities– especially when it comes to how well we can complete an assignment in a limited period of time.  Not only does this constrain our ability to produce exceptional work, but it heightens the stress that is already consuming us. Procrastination is a choice, one that I myself am guilty of. I am able to tell you that the concept “due tomorrow, do tomorrow” is not one that I would advocate.

Teachers are incessantly telling us “not to wait until the last minute” but this request has become a stage for antics about waiting until the last minute. That would be my advice to anyone in the education system, or anyone at all for that matter: do not wait. The older we get, the more coerced we are into believing that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks but the fact of the matter is, it is not too late for any of us, even me.

Do not let the wicked tendencies of time management preempt your capacity to yield exceptional work.  We all have the innate ability to be successful, however procrastination will be an inevitable and unavoidable temptation in our lives, one we must evade to move toward a successful life. Of all the evils I have faced in high school, procrastination has been the most menacing to overcome.

We are regularly instructed to use our time wisely, but when the repetitiveness of this desensitizes its significance, it loses its power of influence.