Procrastination and Education

This is not a real post.  It can't be a real post; I have a math test in 8 1/2 hours for which I still must do a lot of studying!

So I guess it's an imaginary post!  And what better to write about than what is currently one of my biggest troubles?!  Advanced calculus?  No.  Although that really is my biggest problem right now, I doubt many of my friends would care to read about that.  What I'm writing about is procrastination!

Just about every college student I know claims to have a problem with procrastinating.  You think we would've learned our lesson after the all-nighters, poorly written papers, and bombed tests most of us have had because of putting things off until the last minute.  But very few of my friends have been so adversely affected by procrastination that they've sworn it off.  Lord knows I haven't!  Procrastinating actually usually turns out well for me.

In the morning, I'll have to drag myself out of bed to take my test tired and bleary-eyed.  But hopefully I'll be awake enough to spit out all the information I "learned" the night before on my test paper.  I can usually pull off that much, at least.  Too bad I'll probably forget loads of the material as soon as I leave my classroom.

So what good will my procrastination do me?  Well, hopefully it will get me a decent grade on a math test.  But that really isn't what I should be striving for as a college student, is it?  I really do want to learn, and I feel like the way the American education system tests my learning (and has tested my learning since I started elementary school) is not terribly effective.

I may have a 4.0 GPA, but I don't feel like that says much about my intelligence or my abilities.  I think it much more appropriately measures my ability to cram and spit out my "knowledge"on a piece of paper.

There's the problem, and I wish I had a practical solution to propose.  All I can really suggest is that our education should be more focused on experience and application rather than on memorization and regurgitation.  I think it would better prepare students for the real world, whatever that is.

But who is going to listen to what I have to say?  I'm just an insignificant product of America's public education system.