This would be a psychology paper.
I would like to investigate procrastination, going beyond the supposed human propensity toward laziness.
Craig enlightened me the other day by saying that laziness doesn't exist. It's a term likely invented by bosses (parents, teachers, work supervisors, etc.) to disparage the people who don't meet their standards of productivity. If there's something you're not doing (or not doing enough of), you're not just "lazy". There has to be reasons for it. The simplest reason would be that you don't want to.
I, for example, do not want to be researching for my thesis. I can name a thousand (okay, maybe a hundred) other things I rather do. When procrastinating, I don't actually do any of those hundred interesting things. Instead, I do things like play tetris on my phone. Usually I play tetris when I'm bored. But right now I play tetris because it's "easy".
I don't really mean easy. I mean that gratification is very forthcoming, almost instant. With each successive line I fill I earn points, and the faster I am able to manipulate the blocks into lines the faster those points accumulate. Not only is the system of gratification near-instant, it is also very straightforward and clear.
Compare this to my thesis. Not only is the gratification/pay-off very far off in the future, it is also unclear. Will I be a more intelligent or well-rounded person after I write it? Will my research bolster my chances of surviving life after college? Will people's lives be positively impacted by my thesis? Will people respect/praise me for what I have done?
The answer to all of those questions is "Not necessarily."
If I asked different questions, or had a different life-trajectory in mind (graduate school or opportunity abroad in Japan), then maybe the answers to some/all of my gratification questions would be a resounding "Yes."
Even so, I might still procrastinate. Why?
Fear of failure.
In regards to me and essay-writing, it has always been a vicious cycle of: "I don't know if these ideas/arguments are good enough! Let me think some more before I write anything" -> "AHHH I don't have any more time I'm just going to put whatever down" -> "Wow, that was so mediocre. Next time I need to refine my ideas more or something."
***
Basically, I'm saying that people who play (insert game) all day instead of going to school or getting a job or otherwise doing "what they're supposed to be doing" are not stupid, or lazy, or defunct in some way. They lack an alternate gratification/pay-off system that is both forthcoming and clear, and some way of countering their fear of failure within that system.
This is where I think having a mentor is especially important. A mentor not only counters that fear of failure, but serves as a guide toward which gratification system to choose.
This is also where I think otherwise bright and upstanding young people can fall through the cracks. Not because they're from poor families in underserved communities where gangs and street crime rates are high (and/or all the other typical factors that make an "at-risk" youth), but because they are lost.
They suffer from following the gratification system of their parents/guardians/authority figures because:
1) gratification (aka approval) is far off, or withheld/nonexistent
2) gratification is unclear, or arbitrarily assigned
3) fear of failure is high and/or uncountered
So they try to break away, and in the absence of having something else to follow the temptation is to seek approval instead from friends/boyfriends/"society" or to simply indulge in risky/addictive/instantly gratifying behavior.
I assert that this is a rational choice.
***
I was at-risk once.
I would have forgotten, except for talking with my long-ago mentor. And I was reminded, that I was inducted into a gratification system full of people and community, light sound and color. And it is no longer so perplexing why it is so hard for me to go back, to thesis.