Okay, let’s talk about this. Back when I was in college, I swear, it felt like a universal rule: all the big assignments, the papers, the problem sets, they were ALWAYS due Sunday night, like 11:59 PM, or first thing Monday morning. It used to drive me absolutely nuts.
I remember complaining about it constantly with my friends. We’d be like, “Do they coordinate this? Do they want us to have zero weekend?” It felt like this big, unfair pile-on right before the new week even started. You’d just finish stressing about one deadline, and bam, the next week’s lectures hit you.
Figuring it Out (Sort Of)
For the longest time, I just accepted it as ‘one of those college things’. But then, probably around sophomore or junior year, I started thinking about it differently. It wasn’t one single ‘aha!’ moment, more like a slow realization built from a few things:
- My Own Habits: Let’s be honest. Even if something was assigned on a Tuesday, when did I really start working on it seriously? Usually Saturday afternoon, or, more often, Sunday. I think professors kinda know this. They’ve seen it year after year. So maybe setting the deadline for Sunday/Monday is just acknowledging the reality of student procrastination. They give you the week, knowing full well many won’t touch it until the weekend.
- The Weekly Rhythm: College schedules run in weekly blocks, right? You get lectures and new material Monday through Friday. It started making sense that professors would want the previous week’s work submitted before the next wave of classes and topics began. A Sunday or Monday deadline creates a clean cut-off point. It wraps up Week 4’s stuff right as Week 5 kicks off.
- Professor/TA Workflow: I had a friend who was a TA for a bit. He mentioned his professor liked having submissions come in Sunday night or Monday morning so they could start organizing or maybe even grading them before things got hectic with teaching the new week’s classes. It gives them a buffer, a chance to deal with the submitted work before assigning the next thing. It’s practical from their end.
Trying to Adapt My Process
Once I started seeing it less as a personal attack on my free time and more as a logistical thing (mixed with predicting student habits), it didn’t make the deadlines less stressful, but it changed how I tried to approach them.
My big strategy became trying to beat the Sunday rush. It was simple, but hard to stick to:
- Set a personal goal to get a solid draft or the bulk of the work done by Friday evening or Saturday afternoon.
- Use Sunday for reviewing, editing, polishing, or tackling the leftover bits, instead of starting from scratch in a panic.
Did it always work? Heck no. There were plenty of late Sunday nights fueled by caffeine and regret. But when I managed to stick to it, my weekends felt way different. I actually had some breathing room on Sunday. It made the whole cycle feel a bit less like a relentless hamster wheel.
So yeah, looking back, the Sunday/Monday deadline crunch felt less like some grand conspiracy and more like a predictable outcome of weekly academic schedules and, well, human nature (both the professors’ need for structure and the students’ tendency to wait until the last minute). It was annoying, for sure, but understanding the ‘why’ helped me figure out my own way to handle it, even if imperfectly.
