Replacement

Another day, another class. Just as I began altering my mindset to relaxed mode, the lecturer seemed to utter something undesirable. I did not really catch what he said one bit. The last class of the day was over. The day was done. "Hey you, what did he say just now?" I asked my equally lazy course mate next to me. "Replacement class for next week will be this Friday la". He replied in the typical Malaysian slang.

I groaned. Just when I naively thought I would have my coming Friday free, this just had to happen. I guess some things are just inevitable, since clashes in time for various activities were bound to happen from time to time.

As I dragged my heavy feet across the floor, heading out of the room, I began thinking of re-scheduling my already mentally made plans. I just hated it. It was such a pain. The confinement of time really gave me a headache. I had so much to do, but so little time to do it. And then there was the issue of two activities going on at the same time, or at least overlapping with each other.

I continued walking with a slow pace, went to the familiar bench area nearby and sat down. I then took out my laptop, which stored all my important data and notes. Being so accustomed to typing out stuff, I used my laptop for almost everything. Whether it be typing out notes, journals or even schedules. On my desktop, I had more than three sticky notes, each filled with to-do lists which I was sure would be done at the very last minute.

"Hmm, so I guess I should change the meeting to after ...." I was lost in thought as to how to re-arrange my already neatly done plan prior to the replacement lecture. It was a mess. Funny how one small change can affect every other thing. I proceeded to lay all my items down again, and went through one by one, to decide which I should give priority too, which ones were compulsory, and which ones I could further procrastinate on doing.

After staring at the list for quite a while, I managed to sort out a few items. "Whew!" I breathed a sigh of relief. I would never know how tedious and mentally sapping re-scheduling was if the replacement lecture never happened. At least I now knew.

Just as I was going on with the remaining items, I received a new email. "Class for English Phonetics for next week is cancelled, replacement will be on this coming Thursday ..."

I stared at my laptop screen, slowly shut it down, closed it, and put it into my bag. I then took up my bag and headed back to my hostel.

I was a procrastinator after all.