When I was a student, I was very good at procrastination. Apparently this is a skill held by many students. So much so, that in 2010, the Europa University Viadrina’s Writing Center came up with the idea of inviting students to spend the night in the library and providing support to help them work on their papers while they were there. One English translation of this event is the “long night of postponed papers”, which I think captures the spirit of it. This event proved to be very popular and soon spread its way to other universities in Germany and then to other countries.
On Wed, Dec 2, a version of this will come to UB, when Langsdale Library will stay open until 1:00am for a Final Finish. At this event, writing tutors from the Achievement and Learning Center and Librarians from Langsdale will be on hand to provide support as you write. There are several other Universities holding similar events and you can follow them using the hashtags #lanp (Long Night against Procrastination) or #intlwritein (International Write-In).
If you are planning to attend, one strategy that could be useful is to post your writing goal for the night on a social media platform. This could be a post to your friends, or you could try to reach out to the larger community by using #ubalt, #lanp or #intlwritein. Stephanie Dreyürst argues that posting goals publicly like this, especially if other people in the community engage and encourage you, can help motivate students to actually meet their goals.