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The 50 Best Ways to Procrastinate on an Assignment

Though our four years in college are supposed to help us cultivate our time management skills, we somehow still manage to find ways to squander our time every day—only now, we’ve gotten more creative in how we do it. If you’re looking to put off that 10-page paper for a couple more hours (or a couple more days…), here are just a few of the best ways to temporarily avoid that tedious assignment.   

50. Practice your autograph for when you become famous.

49. Pretend the floor in your room is hot lava.

48. Teach yourself how to blow a bubble with bubble gum.

47. Go onto Google Earth and decide where you’re going to build your future home.

46. Write a haiku about something you’d like to further explore, such as the moment you lost your innocence or the mysterious smell lingering in the hallway outside your dorm room.

45. Try to see how long you can hold your breath.

44. Look at old pictures from when you studied abroad last semester and cry.

43. Order 40 Hawaiian pizzas from the pizza shop down the street and have them delivered to your cheater ex or that philosophy professor who didn’t appreciate your paper on “Why Plato is Pointless.”

42. Watch a YouTube beauty tutorial on how to create perfect barrel curls (and accidently burn off a small section of your hair in the process).


41. Facebook stalk people you haven’t spoken to since high school.

40. Attempt to figure out how many licks it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

39. Paint all your fingernails a different color, and then remove all the polish after deciding it looks stupid.

38. Make a list of all the books you’ve always wanted to read (then decide you don’t have time to actually read any of them).

37. Open up the Wikipedia site and search the most random thing you can think of, such as toast, glue or King Louis XIV. Keep clicking on different links within each article until you can’t remember what you began your search with in the first place.

36. Try to initiate a texting conversation with someone solely through emojis. 


35. Master the art of folding an origami swan.

34. Stare out your window and wait until you see something interesting happen, like a secret romantic tryst or someone tripping over his or her shoelace.

33. Search real estate websites for apartments you will more than likely never be able to afford on the Upper East Side in New York City.

32. Put something random of yours for sale on eBay, such as the single red pump that you can’t find the match to or your Hello Kitty pencil sharpener. 

31. Sort all the clothes hanging in your closet by color.

30. Draw an elaborate tattoo on your arm.

29. Try to master a yoga tripod headstand.


28. Learn the lyrics to a complicated rap song and perform it for your roommates.

27. Look up all the froyo stores in your local area to see which ones have the best flavors.

26. Finally get around to cleaning your dorm room (which will consequently only get you more distracted).

25. Use eyeliner to draw a mustache onto your face and then take selfies on Photo Booth.

24. Practice writing your name with your non-dominant hand (because who knows when being ambidextrous might come in handy!).

23. Tie-dye all of your white socks.

22. Make a list of all the names you might consider naming your future children one day.

21. Bake a couple dozen cookies and go around offering some to every dorm room in your building.


20. Learn the choreography from the “Thriller” music video.

19. Attempt to develop six-pack abs by doing a series of sit-ups, press-ups and leg raises before deciding that getting a six pack is too much work.

18. Memorize the names of all the contestants that have ever appeared on America’s Next Top Model and what cycle they competed in.

17. Stalk the Instagram account of the most obscure celebrities you can think of, such as former contestants on the Real World/Road Rules Challenge or anyone who has ever starred on a short-lived Bravo television show.

16. Photoshop the faces of you and your friends onto various people’s bodies, such as the Spice Girls or the members of One Direction.

15. Teach yourself how to do the Cup Song.

14. Take on the challenge of an impossible Pinterest recipe.


13. Build a blanket fort.

12. Braid your hair into cornrows.

11. Send an inbox message on Facebook to your best friend from the first grade, updating her on what you’ve been up to for the past 12 or so years.

10. Watch a YouTube video tutorial on how to twerk.

9. Try applying your makeup with your eyes closed.

8. Write a letter to your future self asking important questions, such as if you’ll end up with a fulfilled life and if the spring concert will be any good this year.

7. Binge watch several episodes of your favorite childhood cartoon show. 

6. Take several unflattering Snapchats of yourself bleaching your upper lip or appearing to have seven chins and send them to all of your friends (and then freak out when you accidently send one to your crush).

5. Design yourself a pair of extravagant, custom-made sneakers online that you don’t ever plan on actually buying.

4. Inspect your pores in a magnified mirror, and after deciding they look huge, make yourself a homemade cleansing face mask. 

3. Create a profile on a dating site that doesn’t appeal to your typical demographic, such as Sea Captain Date or FarmersOnly.com.

2. Write a one-act play in which you and Ryan Gosling happen to meet in a local park and inevitably fall into a passionate, whirlwind romance.

1. Make a list of all the things you need to get done this week (and then decide you’ll do them all later).

 

Good luck avoiding that assignment, collegiettes!

Corinne Sullivan is an editorial intern at Her Campus. She is in her senior year at Boston College, majoring in English with a Creative Writing Concentration. On campus, she cheers at football and basketball games as part of the Boston College Pom Squad and performs as a member of the Dance Organization of Boston College. She also teaches spin classes at the campus gym and contributes to the BC branch of Her Campus. Corinne loves the beach, all things chocolate, and is unashamed of her love for Young Adult Fiction. You can follow her on Twitter at @cesullivan14. 
Cassidy is a Digital Production intern at Her Campus. She's currently a junior studying journalism at Emerson College. Cassidy also is a freelance reporter at the Napa Valley Register and a staff writer at Her Campus Emerson. Previously she blogged for Seventeen Magazine at the London 2012 Olympics, wrote for Huffington Post as a teen blogger and was a Team Advisor at the National Student Leadership Conference on Journalism, Film, & Media Arts at University of California, Berkeley and American University in Washington, D.C.. When she's not uploading content to Her Campus or working on her next article, Cassidy can be found planning her next adventure or perfecting her next Instagram. Follow her on Twitter at @cassidyyjayne and @cassidyjhopkins.