Schoolwork: Nobody wants to do it. After all, you might have a lot to do, but it might not be due immediately, so why rush? Procrastination is a college student’s worst enemy, and you realize you’ve fallen victim to it when it’s too late.
Funnily enough, a classic episode of Spongebob, aptly named “Procrastination,” captures this phenomenon in a hilariously creative fashion. It arguably becomes funnier when you realize how relatable it is.
The plot of “Procrastination” is simple: For homework, Spongebob must write an essay of no less than 800 words on what not to do at a stoplight and turn it in the next morning. However, this is Spongebob we’re talking about, so he makes it way more difficult than it must be.
If this premise sounds oddly familiar, it’s because we as students also dread writing essays. It doesn’t matter what the assignment is about, when it’s due, or what the word limit is—it’s embedded in our brains that essays are travesties.
Throughout the episode, Spongebob gets sidetracked by random distractions. First, he limbers up, and when he scoots his chair forward, he makes music out of the squeaking the chair makes. Then Gary appears, prompting Spongebob to feed him, but Gary makes a mess that Spongebob immediately cleans, and what follows gets sillier. While it’s hyperbolic at times, that only helps to paint the message accurately.
Notice that Spongebob verbally calls out chores before tackling them. If you listen carefully, you’ll recognize a pattern: He’s prioritizing secondary tasks, making them sound preliminary to the essay. He doesn’t say “I’m going to clean the kitchen,” he says, “I can’t work on my essay knowing there’s a mess in the kitchen!” Spongebob does this again when he claims he “can’t write on an empty stomach” or “can’t write with eraser shavings all over [his] paper.” However, this could also represent the removal of distractions by feeding into them.
Then, there’s showing restraint. Before chaos ensues, Spongebob basically gets taunted by people outside having fun, especially his best friends, Patrick and Sandy. It’s hard to not goof off, especially when you know what your friends are doing, which arguably makes it harder to resist out of envy.
Most people probably remember the scene where Spongebob actually does work on his essay for the first time… or at least it looks like it. To recap: a montage ensues with Spongebob going to town on his essay, screaming, “And some of these!” Alas, the ugly truth gets revealed: All he was doing was writing the word “The” in fancy detail.
Doing little and claiming it as a lot is another part of procrastination. You could write the introductory paragraph to an essay or acquire the data for an informational paper, but you’re only a step closer. The more you wait, the closer the deadline gets.
That’s where the clock comes into play. Every so often, Spongebob glances at the clock to reassure himself about how much time he has, and the more he procrastinates, the more intense the situation becomes. We do the same thing in real life, using what large amount of time we have as our own excuse and wasting seconds every time we glance back at it.
However, your worst-case scenario is if you lose track of time, and there’s one bad way that can happen: falling asleep. Spongebob inferably dozed off after writing the first word of his essay, which becomes a plot twist towards the end of the episode to explain the crazier occurrences like how he burned his house down.
Sleep is important to college students, because we need it to function, more so as we receive bigger projects that may bend our sleep schedule. Although, sometimes, we might try to sleep on our work instead of getting it out of the way and sleeping afterward.
Hints to the twist of Spongebob falling asleep are also significant. Spongebob acknowledges how Patrick, a mailman, and a news anchor all knew about his essay. They symbolize that internal urge to resist procrastinating. We experience it when we tell ourselves mid-distraction, “I should really work on my assignment.”
“Procrastination” as an episode really speaks to me as a college student who deals with this problem frequently, and it probably does to you, too. No, you don’t want to write your essay or do your assignment, but you have to. It takes restraint and perseverance. Sure, the episode ends with Spongebob’s assignment not even mattering, but it’s better safe than sorry, because you never know what might come up.