Megan’s abroad in London, England, until Dec. 13.

I’ve hit the halfway point of my time here in London, but my to-do list couldn’t be longer. The list in my planner includes the usual — laundry, grocery shopping, trip planning — but also includes doing required reading from about four weeks ago. I’m well aware that before any of that reading gets crossed off my list, I’ll have crossed everything else off first, then spent about three hours on Facebook and Skype. It’s not that I’m a slacker — well, okay, I admit it, I am. At least here, where the “study” is pretty much removed from “study abroad.”

See, there isn’t one thing that motivates me to do work while I’m at Goldsmiths. First of all, I’m in London for three months and I ought to take advantage of the city. I know I won’t be able to visit every single neighborhood in the city or fly off to every country in Europe, but I feel like if I sit and read, I’m wasting time that I could be spending in museums, markets or restaurants that I’ll never get to see again. Now mind you, instead of reading I often just sleep in, but it’s the principle of the thing, of course.

Also, the academic structure in London universities makes it so easy to procrastinate. Classes meet only once a week for a few hours, and lecturers expect you to do most of your work outside of class. And all of my classes are assessed by just one paper of around 2,500 words, due the tenth week of the term. Until then, I can sit back, relax, and watch all the episodes of Mad Men I missed.

The structure also affects the attitude of my British classmates. Often they’ll stroll into class 15 or 20 minutes late and feel entitled to ask redundant questions, since they didn’t do the reading either. I’ve never seen any of my flatmates doing reading for class, and most of them stay up until 4 a.m. most nights and skip their morning classes. If the full-time students can do this, why shouldn’t I join them?

And it isn’t like Northwestern is combating my laziness. Grades I get while abroad won’t factor into my overall GPA back home — they’ll just show up as transfer credit as long as I earn above the equivalent of a C. It shouldn’t be difficult to get a passing grade on a six-page paper that I have twelve weeks to work on.

Now I’m sure you are playing a tiny invisible violin for me, poor Megan in London with zero midterms or academic stress. I know, I’m really lucky to be in this situation. I’m just afraid that during week nine, I’ll suddenly be buried under the weight of my impending papers and curse the day I decided my academics didn’t matter at Goldsmiths. But that’s so far away, right? I have plenty of time to check Facebook for three more hours.

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