“Meredith, you’re up,” I shout across the room.  It’s the end of the first quarter, and we’re in the midst of grade conferences.  She comes to the table with her portfolio, and spreads her work out on the table.

I’ve looked at her self-evaluation, and she has given herself a high grade under the question about time management - did you make due dates consistently.  I happen to know that she has blown a number of deadlines along the way, and that, more importantly, there seems to be this frantic rush on her part at the end of every contract.

“I’d like to start with the personal outcomes, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure, that’s fine.”

“I notice that you gave yourself a “B” for meeting deadlines.”  

She responds with a laugh.  “Yeah,” she says, “that may have been a little generous.”

“I’d like to get a better feel about how you manage your time.  When we get to the last day or two of the contract, how close are you to having done enough work.  Take this last contract for instance.  There were sixteen items due, and you only had fourteen of them done when you turned the contract in.  So, how many of those fourteen did you do, say, in the last two days before the deadline?”

“Probably four of them.”  

I detect that she is slightly embarrassed by admitting it. 

“Meredith, we’re here to find out what challenges you are facing and figure out how to get better at learning.  Believe me when I tell you, I’ve seen it all.  Doing a lot of work at the last minute is not the end of the world, but it does say something about how you manage your time.  So, no matter what we talk about today, there’s no place for shame or blame.  We’re just diagnosing how you work.

“So let me ask you this:  do you procrastinate doing the contract work?”

“I procrastinate doing everything,” she wails.  “I’m so busy doing so many things at the same time.  I can’t tell you how out of control I feel about keeping up with schoolwork.  It’s a disaster.”

“Okay, now we have something to work with,” I say with a smile.

“First of all, you are not alone - a lot of people are procrastinators.  I’m actually better at it now than I used to be, but I was really bad at managing my own time when I was your age and throughout my college days.

“So I have to ask you this:  do you think this is a serious problem in your life, or are you just irritated with yourself?  Because unless you really believe this is something you have to deal with, there’s not much point in us talking about it.”

“I want to say it’s a serious problem, but I know myself, and anything you and I come up with isn’t going to stay in my head for very long.”

“Let’s finish coming up with a grade, and we’ll talk about this again in a few days.  In the meantime, I’d like to think about the question of how much you’d like to break this habit.

“As for the grades, you’re doing okay - your journal work is pretty good, although there are often a few too few items completed, like the one we just looked at.  And your test grades are a little erratic, as you can see.  How much of an effect do you think procrastinating is having on your work and how much you are actually learning?”

“I have no doubt that that is the biggest reason why I’m not acing this class.”

“And do you care about your grades?”

“I do, mostly because of how my transcript is going to look in my college applications.”

“So maybe that provides you with some additional incentive to face up to this problem, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely.”

We meet again the following week and come up with several plans to deal with the problem.  She and I sit down at the beginning of every contract and set up interim due dates for specific contract items that she is going to have me check in.  It works reasonably well, with occasional lapses.  It also leads to a number of pivotal conversations about developing this important skill.  The fact that we are looking at this problem together and that she doesn’t have to hide it is an important part of our working relationship.