(Editor’s note: There was procrastination involved in the writing of this article.)

T-Minus 24 hours until a project is due, and not a sentence has been written nor a picture glued down to a poster board.

“I never, ever do things when I should,” junior Riley Trent said.  “I always put things off until the last minute.

Students frequently come to the same problem. The distractions are endless, and in turn, they scramble to finish things at the last possible second.

New York University at Buffalo psychologist William Knaus estimated that 90 percent of college students procrastinate. Of these students, 25 percent are chronic procrastinators and they are usually the ones who end up dropping out of college, though this isn’t always the case: many students thrive on the brink of delay.

“Some people will wait until the deadline’s close so then they get this energy and adrenaline rush,” school psychologist Cathy Kerr said. “Then they cancel everything out and they really concentrate and knock it out — that’s somebody who can work well to a deadline.”

Trent is one of those people. Last semester she worked into the wee hours of the morning to finalize what she said was “the best paper I’ve ever written.”

“The week before finals, I was supposed to be working on a paper for English, and everytime I tried, I simply couldn’t make myself do it,” Trent said. “I ended up working until 4 a.m. the night before it was due to finish it.”

The rise in technology is a contributing factor. With just the press of a button, a person has access to a multitude of distractions, including apps, messaging and social media.

“With social media, you can talk to other people who are procrastinating too,” Trent said. “If you find someone else procrastinating, suddenly it doesn’t seem like a bad idea. And then you find a few more, and then it’s all over for you because then you get the mentality, ‘Well, at least I won’t be screwed alone.’ I tell myself over and over that there is literally nothing I could possibly find on witter that is even half as important as my school work, but as much as I try to avoid it, technology is a vice and I simply cannot escape it.”

Many things contribute to procrastination, yet the one that seems most prevalent in teenager’s lives is exhaustion.

For those under the age of 20, a study of self-reported sleep-induced issues found that 23 percent of those asked were unable to concentrate properly after a bad night’s sleep, which, in turn, makes it harder to concentrate the next day, and therefore a person is more likely to procrastinate.

“As far as high school students go, I would say we mostly procrastinate because we’re tired — tired and unmotivated,” Trent said. “It can be pretty hard to drag yourself out of bed to do that math assignment when you average four hours of sleep a night.”

With so much homework, not to mention after school activities, sports and jobs, students are finding it harder to get their z’s.

“I’m usually either working or playing volleyball when I’m procrastinating, then after either work or volleyball, I am too tired to want to do my assignments,” junior Lexie Penichet said. “If I have to work from 3:45 to 9:30, then I know I have no time after school. I don’t have a study hall during school, so I will most likely need to wake up early and get [my homework] done then.”

In addition to sleep loss, some of the more detrimental effects can occur when people are especially stressed; procrastination can cause symptoms of physical illness, as well as emotional distress.

“I think when you move into that anxiety, it can be crippling and it can cause physical symptoms,” Kerr said. “Anxiety is very physical, so you know, heart racing, and shortness of breath and feeling tired or ill or even nauseous. Over a long period of time, I think that probably can wear down your immune system if you’re that anxious for things, so it can bleed into really making you not function very well.”

Despite the obvious downsides to long-term procrastination, there are ways to get on with life, for good.

“I do think people can overcome procrastination,” Trent said. “I haven’t mastered that yet, but I think a lot of people — myself included, believe it or not — can recognize when it’s really time to get to work and stop messing around. It can be hard but no one wants their grade to drop because they were too lazy to do a simple assignment.”

Among the ways to stop procrastination, Kerr said students can set small goals for themselves, and then “start with the due date, work backwards and then try and accomplish those [goals].”

“[It is helpful to take] short breaks, like working for 10 minutes, taking two minutes off, working for 20 minutes, taking five minutes off — taking short breaks can help calm that anxiety and keep you going on something,” Kerr said. “Sometimes it is a learning process, where ‘next time I have this assignment, I don’t want to feel this way,’ so the next time you start working at those time management skills.”

However, despite all the consequences due to procrastination, it is something that students don’t think will be going away anytime soon.

“When faced with choosing between Instagram and algebra homework, it’s almost always an obvious choice for me,” Trent said. “Then I end up dooming myself to spend another late night scrambling to get work done.”