It’s always a nice surprise to be reading through the newspaper and come across a piece written by a former student. In this case, I was catching up with The Globe and Mail and discovered that today’s Facts & Arguments essay is a piece written for my JN408: The Freelance Journalist course by Eric Thompson.

Here’s a taste of his essay:

I discovered a couple of things in the past few minutes: The world is a totally different place when you are upside down, and successfully standing on your head is a particularly ungratifying experience.

My neck hurts now, and no one was around to capture this moment, so evidence of my achievement does not even exist.

So why did I do it? If I can’t post my success on Facebook triumphantly, why bother?

Here’s why: It’s because for those 15 minutes my world stopped and nothing else mattered. This is the joy of procrastination, something I’ve done my whole life.

By procrastinating, I can ignore the world of troubles that builds up around me. My future deadlines could not possibly be as important as advancing to the next level of a game, or rereading a book for the third time.

You can read the whole piece here.