Play Now, Suffer Later

You know, in my 31 years on this beautiful planet I have had the pleasure of learning a lot of life lessons. Some of those lessons came to me in some beautifully simplistic ways, others came in the form of me being arrogant, rebellious and extremely hard headed. Perhaps the biggest lesson I had to learn was if you play now, you’re gonna suffer later.

My 12th grade English teacher once gave me some advice:

“Procrastination is like masturbation, you just end up screwing yourself in the end.”- Tara Pidgeon

If you ask a lot of people who’ve met me during my adulthood what kind of person I am, many of them who met me at college, work and church will tell you that I am a hardworking well to do person, but what a lot of them and countless others I’ve been blessed to know don’t know is I was one of the laziest most trouble minded kids there was growing up, at least that’s how I see it. My name is Joe Patterson, but truth be told my name should’ve been Joe Procrastinations.

When I was little my favorite episode of SpongeBob Square Pants was the episode titled “Procrastinations”. In this episode SpongeBob had an essay to write, but when it came time to do it he kept slacking off and subconsciously coming up with ways to distract himself from writing his essay. In the end he does just barely get his essay written, but that’s only after hours of procrastinating. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my love for this episode came from the fact that I was the exact same way as a kid. Slacking off to the last minute.

My parents warned me as a kid about how I was gonna hurt myself with my slacker ways, but hard headed me just refused to listen. I can say this all first played out and took a real life effect when I was in the third grade. Up to this point in elementary school I had a very so-so relationship with being a “good” student, but it was during the gateway year of third grade that my true colors were revealed. So third grade was the first year I ever took the End of Grade test aka the EOG. I passed my reading, but didn’t pass the math on the first try. I was given a second take before the summer but I didn’t pass that one either and ended up going to prison, I mean summer school.

Now I’m not gonna lie to you, I cried like a little girl when I was sentenced to summer school. When I went over my godmother’s house for the weekend one of her daughters were there and saw me crying because I had to go to summer school and gave me some cold hard words of truth. “Lil Joe, you was joking around all year in class, playing and joking with ya little buddies and now this is what it got you”. Truer words were never spoken and let me tell you, I have never doubted the existence of hell, because summer school has to be a variation of it.

So all of July I’m getting up EARLY IN THE MORNING five days a week. I’m eating the same crappy breakfast and lunch and listening to the same annoying teachers for six hours a day. Guess what all my friends were doing? Hanging out at the pool, going to the park, going to the beach, playing video games all night long and sleeping in, but not me. I was still on school year time and boy was it traumatic. Eventually I took it that third time and guess what? I still failed, but my third grade teacher set up a review in which I was able to pass by credibility of my portfolio and boy was that a relief.

Now given my traumatic ordeal that was summer school of third grade I actual buckled down and started paying better attention in class by the time I got to fourth and fifth grade, at the same time I also had teachers that made class work and learning more fun so it was easier to pay attention. I struggled some those years, but because I was traumatically afraid of going summer school again I worked diligently enough and made sure that never happened for the remainder of my elementary tenure. As a result I was successful, I passed both my fourth and fifth grade EOGs without having to go summer school and boy did it feel good.

Now this sounds like I was getting it together right? But the problem here is I didn’t get it together at the end of elementary for the sake of being a better student, I got it together out of fear and desperation, my mindset was still the same and as long as I could pull a SpongeBob at the last minute I thought all was well. Surely enough I was gonna find out that this all was gonna come crashing down on my head.

When I successfully made the transition to middle school I ended up being a bigger procrastinator than ever. Middle school was certainly the worse years of my school life. Sixth grade was double the work load of what I had in elementary so I was double the lazy. The end result was I failed BOTH OF MY EOG’s, math and reading. Had two tries before the summer, failed em’ both and it was off to the gulag. Once again it was getting up early in the morning, eating the same crappy food and dealing with annoying teachers for the whole month of July. What were all my friends doing? You guessed it, enjoying the summer. Now by the grace of God I passed both of those test and made it to the seventh grade, but I was still just as lazy and troublesome as ever.

By the middle of seventh grade I had moved in with my dad in a new school district. Though I still was the same lazy bum, this time I had a year end advantage: only one of our EOG scores would’ve been back before the summer, the math. So all I had to do was pass the reading, which I did, so my seventh grade summer was free by default. Though I had a free seventh grade summer, my math EOG came back in the 8th grade and NOPE I did not pass it, still it didn’t count against me so I wasn’t really shaken.

As you can imagine, my eighth grade year was of course one of slack and how did it end? Failed my math EOG, twice before the summer and it was back to the gulag. Thankfully and once again I just barely passed my final attempt over the summer and made it to high school.

By the time I made it to high school I was genuinely exhausted with my laziness. I was tired of playing around and having to suffer later because of it, so now it was time for a change in mentality. I no longer wanted to deal with the consequences of being a slacker so I decided to pinpoint the core of what fed my poor work ethic and I realized it was just me being lazy. I came to understand that if things were gonna get better for me I was gonna have to shake off my lazy mindset and reprogram my mind to be study focused and diligent based, and so I put all of this into motion.

Though I wasn’t perfect, studying became a weekly thing for me in all subjects. I came up with a study method and practiced it on a daily basis. Paying better attention in class also became a top priority. Mind you I wasn’t perfect at all of this effort, but I was certainly doing a lot better than I was in middle school. Final exams were the biggest shift in my schoolwork ethics. Instead of waiting til’ the last couple of weeks to study for my finals like I did in middle school, I started studying a couple months in advance. It was a gradual process, but the more I put it in motion, the better of a student I became. I’m proud to say that I didn’t have to go to summer school not once in high school.

By the end of high school college was now an option for me with how much I had bettered myself. I eventually graduated high school, attended college and even earned an associates degree. By this point in my life my mother had passed away, but I felt like I had grown to be the diligent and responsible adult that she had hoped for me to be.

If you play around now you will definitely suffer later. Procrastination and sloth is a prison. I caused myself a lot of pain and suffering because I was lazy. There were so many opportunities afforded to me and so many good times that I missed out on because I played around when I should’ve been taking care of business. The worse part about all of this is I really was a smart kid, but I let my slacker ways get the best of me. I’m thankful to say that I’ve learned the error of my ways and that I’m a much better person in that respect. I really do hope that someone who has dealt with these consequences like I have will see this story and share it with someone who they believe can learn from it.