I have a love-hate relationship with deadlines. Like many of us, I have long dreamed of the day when the endless stream of homework assignments would finally cease, and I would be freed from the tyranny of Friday 11:59 p.m. Canvas submissions forever. Yet as I sit here typing out this article at 11 p.m. the day it is due, I also recognize that there are times I simply wouldn’t get things done without them.
All of my life I have been a perpetual procrastinator. However, while I was in school, last-minute panic made sure that I always turned in my assignments on time, even if sometimes I cut it a little close. Heavens forbid I miss a deadline and immediately feel my stomach drop as I see “MISSING” in big red letters alongside a drop in my course grade.
I am currently in the second year of my master’s here at Hopkins. Having finished all of my coursework in my first year left with just independent research and thesis-writing, I have finally reached the promised land and not had to open Canvas a single time this semester. While I still have proposal submission dates and project timelines — and will for the rest of my working career once I graduate and get a job — traditional deadlines in the way I have known for the last 17 years are finally behind me. But now that the day has dawned, this end of deadlines doesn’t feel like the triumphant happy ending I always imagined.
For one thing, while the incessant bombarding of small deadlines fades away, the few deadlines that remain are more important and less forgiving. It is no longer a few percentages off of your course grades that just means you need to study harder for the next exam. It is missing a grant application that sets you back a year, or a job application posting when you don’t know when the next one will come.
Yet even more dangerous are the aspects for which there is no explicit deadline at all: exercising regularly, spending time with your loved ones and pursuing your personal goals. Without the structure of deadlines to help me navigate my life, I all too often find myself paralyzed by the expansive fields of endless possibility and overwhelming choices. Deadlines are annoying, but annoyance is the point of an alarm. In their absence, I feel lost, directionless.
The harder truth is, even for these aspects of life, deadlines don’t disappear, they simply become invisible. For most people, there is a double-digit number of summers that you will experience in your lifetime. And while it is never too late to chase your dreams, waiting around forever to start may mean you never get the chance to achieve them. From calling your mom to spending time with that friend you don’t know will move away in two years, there still exists a “deadline.” The difference is that there is no demarcated date you are made aware of until it is too late and you realize the real deadline passed months ago.
So while my break from deadlines has been nice, I no longer think I want it to last forever. In place of an end to deadlines, perhaps I simply need to re-wire my relationship with deadlines. Instead of thinking of them as stressful evaluations, I should think of them as checkpoints of progress to help me on my way to what I want. A gentle reminder that time moves onwards, and of a promise I made to a future self. And once there’s no more professor to set deadlines for me, I will have to find other ways to create them, like asking my friends to help keep me accountable.
As I move more fully into post-grad life and adulthood — a world where reminders aren’t automatic and the path forward is less conspicuous than ever — I will need to learn new strategies to self-motivate and spur myself to action in lieu of the adrenaline of last-minute panic. My hope is that one day I can live life to the fullest and chase my dreams relentlessly without the need for a Canvas notification pinging me a reminder to seize the day. But until then, deadlines can help keep me on track and remind me of the things I decide matter most.
Jason Chang is a graduate student from Woodbury, Minn. studying Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. His column is a celebration of the quiet moments that linger amid the jumble of our busy lives: moments of stillness, reflection and a space to just exist.
