By Gasia Trtrian

It happens to the best of us: We tell ourselves we’re going to study or work, cancel plans, stay at home, sit in front of a computer or a book… And next thing we know, we’re an hour into watching cat videos on YouTube.

Can you relate? If so, you’re not alone. 80%-95% of college students have engaged in procrastination, reported psychologist Piers Steel, Ph.D.

According to a study done by Princeton University, procrastination is not about being lazy. It’s more about insecurity, anxiety and stress.

When asked why they procrastinate, people generally give one of the two common answers: They either claim to be lazy, or they claim that they work  best under pressure.

“I can finish an 8 hour job in an hour if I’m under pressure,” says Anis Tabet, Lebanon’s famous movie reviewer and blogger.

While some people do actually work more efficiently under the pressure of a near deadline, leaving things to the last minute increases the risk of everything going wrong. With the clock ticking, there’s no time to resolve problems that could have easily been fixed had there been more time, specially technical problems.

Almost everyone procrastinates. Every now and then it is okay to miss a deadline, as long as you don’t turn it into a habit and cross the red line.

Chronic procrastinators tend to get stuck in a repeating loop of intensive last-minute work, all-nighters, stress, stress and more stress.

“Every time I procrastinate, I feel bad about it. I promise myself it’s not going to happen again, because the stress of pulling an all-nighter while seeing your friends done with their work and going out is huge.” Says Tarek Hallal, a university student. “But somehow, it keeps happening again and again,” he adds.

While non-procrastinators might think that people who procrastinate are more relaxed and careless, the opposite is true. It’s always better to get work done, than to push it aside. Procrastination causes stress and anxiety, and people who procrastinate tend to constantly have the thought of their undone assignments in the back of their minds, and so are deprived of the relief of having a clear conscience.

The Huffington Post published an article calling procrastination “the root of all evil”. Most psychologists disagree with this idea. If we are using the tree metaphor, procrastination is rather the trunk. It’s an outcome that’s an obvious problem to everyone, but the root of this so-called “evil” lies in Cognitive Distortion (i.e: faulty thinking).

Have you ever tried to solve your procrastination problem? How?

The study done by Princeton found that making schedules and writing down “To Do” lists only makes it worse. Being faced by a giant workload can be stressful, and so it is suggested to take one task at a time. Instead of writing down everything you have to do for the next 2 weeks, try smaller steps. Write down a single task you have to accomplish today on a small sticky note. Doesn’t look as scary, huh?

Another thing that helps with procrastination is Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). CBT is a type of psychotherapy that challenges negative thought patterns in order to change unwanted behaviors of a person. It is also used to treat disorders like depression.

In order to solve most psychological problems, one should first understand the root of the problem. Procrastination is often fueled by fear of failure or fear of looking stupid. By leaving things to the last minute, the procrastinator puts the blame on the lack of time rather than his/her own understanding or intellect. How we behave often reflects how we think about certain things or situations. Because of this, CBT, which is a mixture of cognitive and behavioral therapies, is effective.

By Eman Chaiban and Gasia Trtrian 

Changes introduced to the Communication Arts program, in light of internal developments at LAU with the appointment of a new department chairperson, have caused some confusion among students.

In an effort to clarify the new program and communicate the views of the university to students, as well as, to obtain feedback from students, interviews were made with the department’s chairperson and a number of Communication Arts students:

Dr. Jad Melki, the new chairperson for Communication Arts explains the issue of the new program in the following interview:

Eman Chaiban is a junior Journalism student at the Lebanese American University. Contact information: eman.chaiban@lau.edu or echaiban13@gmail.com. 

By Nour El-Hoss

As the Fall semester approaches, new students admitted to LAU are waiting impatiently to experience college life. Most of them expect to be similar to that they see in movies, until they are shoved to reality by what they face, meet, and experience. Here are five things prospective students LAU students should know and expect about their new university.

5-  Smoking area:

There is only one on-campus smoking area and that is between Orme Grey and the Business Building. While passing by that during peak time which is between 12 and 1 pm, expect to see clouds and clouds of smoke that can blur out your vision and/or go breathless. Not only that, you would need to literally find your way between smokers ‘chilling’ there. When the weather gets hot, you feel as if you just stepped in a mirror-room, because you can see your reflection on the sunglasses everyone is wearing as you pass-by.

4- The library:

Outside the finals period, the library is the place where you learn how to whisper and lip-read to maintain a conversation and not get stares or demands from the librarians to zip it. The library is at its fullest in 3 occasions: midterms period, finals period, and when it is raining outside. You won’t be able to find a chair. In those times, people refrain from leaving their chairs to avoid having them taken by students who are “group-working”. If you want to take a trip to the toilet or to the vending machine, leave at your own responsibility.

3- The WiFi:

You’d expect that because LAU is a private and high-level university, the WiFi would be super-fast. It is not, especially in the library during the finals period, nor in Nicol hall in general. It is a trial and error process, you keep searching and trying until you find the spot that has the least number of people and consequently the fasted connection. Students say such spots exist, however they cannot be known easily or else, they won’t be fast anymore. Also, you cannot download any torrent files.

2- Registration:

Usually, the registration or add/drop period starts at 8:00 am sharp. Odds are by 8:01 most “easy” elective courses are already closed and that means that your very convenient, only MWF (or TTH), or that includes no long breaks, and no 8:00 am classes schedule goes down the drain. It is then when you start lowering your standards and lying to yourself with thoughts like: waking early is better for my body or I’ll study at the library in the long breaks. Registration is an art that you get to master by the time become a senior, well that is because seniors register first but anyway.

1- Cats:

Do you hate cats? Are you allergic? Do cats scare you? Well, prepare to live with it. Because LAU is full of cats and they are there to stay. There are many food options in the area surrounding LAU, however if you had the urge to eat a chicken sandwich and bring it to campus, prepare to be stared-down and/or followed by hungry cats. They have absolutely no problem in following you all around campus for that matter. However, note that feeding the cats is prohibited. They sit in your lap, walk between your feet, and sit next to you in the garden. They like socializing and you should to because if you dare do anything wrong to them, a dean’s warning would be there waiting for you.

By Elsy Bejjani and Ghina Mohsen

The Lebanese American University claims to be wheelchair friendly. In an attempt to find out if these claims were true, two of the Tribune’s writers went on a journey on the Beirut campus. One of them was sitting in a wheelchair and the second was filming. Our aim was to see if a student on a wheelchair can reach all the buildings and classes.

Findings

Throughout our experience we discovered that it was very hard to move around campus. Not only because the campus wasn’t completely wheelchair friendly but also because most of the students on campus did not sympathize with the student on the wheelchair.

Some were starring, others were making offensive jokes, and few looked at the student on the wheelchair with pity. Only five offered to help, the others watched the “show”.

Some of the difficulties we faced were that the roads on campus are very bumpy so it was extremely tough to stay in control of the wheelchair.  We also weren’t able to access all the buildings because they’re not adaptable to students with special needs.  Finally, the person on the wheelchair needs constant help from friends because some roads are curved or leaned so he/she might be in danger of falling if he/she doesn’t get pushed by friends around campus.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t access many buildings. The IT department and the lost and found department were unreachable because of the small steps in front of the buildings.

We could reach the offices at the Fine Arts building and the theatre; however we couldn’t get to the classes because the only way to get to them is by going down the stairs.

Shannon Hall is also inaccessible because it is not equipped with elevators or ramps that make it wheelchair friendly. So students that want to talk to their professors have to meet with them elsewhere.

It was relatively easy to reach Sage Hall, except for the little bumps on the road. Once we were inside the building we couldn’t reach the classrooms that weren’t in the ground floor because the only way up was through two staircases.

The post office was surrounded with stairs, so the solution for a student with disability to get his/her mail is by sending a friend to get it.

Fortunately, the other buildings were well equipped with elevators and ramps that made it easy for us to move around without any major difficulty.

Here is the video of our struggles around the Beirut campus.

Special thanks to Dania Hawat for pushing the wheelchair when needed.

About the authors:

Elsy Bejjani is a senior at LAU pursuing a B.S. in Management and a B.A. in Journalism.  You  can contact her on bejjanielsy@gmail.com

Ghina Mohsen is a sophomore journalism student at LAU. She is a also a PR assistant at LAU and a social media enthusiast. You can contact her on ghinamohsen0@gmail.com