The Last Minute Phenomenon - Work Smart not Hard!

“It takes 46 muscles to frown but only 4 to flip ‘em the bird”. I feel myself connecting with this gem of wisdom as I look at the last year of my life. My epic battle with education is coming to a close in a few days and I have no idea if it’s all been worth it. Maybe I should’ve flipped them the bird when I had a chance.

My exam starts in two hours. That is two agonising hours of waiting and berating myself for not working hard earlier. Many of us have that disease I guess, that plague which makes us fool around the entire year and then cram the whole syllabus into our heads a day before we actually write the paper. I myself am a chronic patient of this disease; I’ve been infected with it all my life and will no doubt continue to suffer from it for the rest of my stay on planet earth.

I used to hate myself for this. After every exam I used to take an oath that the same won’t happen again, that next time I’ll work much harder. But nothing changes; I sit through the next set of exams with my last minute revision and unabashedly take the same oath again. It is a little like the saying that everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. I was willing to take the oath, but I wasn’t willing to go through with it.

However, today is different. Not that I worked hard this time, I still rely on my last minute feats of endurance as ever, but I’ve realised that this is me. I am not someone who works hard, I am someone who neglects his duties and relies on improvisation to pull him through. I shouldn’t fight it, I should cherish it.

Yes, hard-work never killed anybody, but why take the risk? I’m good at what I do, I have fun and I get through it in the end. Why change a formula that works? To be honest, I really am tired of people telling me how capable I am and how much I can achieve if I just worked harder. It has never occurred to them that the reason I’m good is because of the life I lead, that if I immerse myself into those colossal books in the library, I wouldn’t be as good anymore. The price I pay for being me is that I’m lazy, I can’t deny that.

So this is a message to all those out there who rely on their last minute improvisation skills like me. Working hard is for nerds, working smart is for us. And don’t give a shit about those hypocrites who accuse us of being lazy; we live our lives for us, not for them. When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep - not screaming, like the passengers in my car.