The clock is ticking. The deadline is looming. Procrastination has struck. You’ve already made two cups of tea, four fruitless trips to the fridge and colour coded your underwear drawer. (Not to mention the two-hour long lunch break you spent watching disturbing Miley Cyrus parodies on YouTube.) As you slump back in your chair, you realise you’ve reached full on crisis mode.

Before it gets any worse, you just get out. Escape your stagnant room/library/lair. Fresh air is your best friend in any essay crisis situation. So you take a wander around town, dodging school groups and tourists till you find a secluded spot on the backs and give yourself that much needed ten minutes of oxygen, CO2, hydrogen, or any other exotic elements you take a fancy to. (Yttrium is underrated.)

One you have had your fill, it’s time to get serious. You need inspiration. You toddle off back to college and watch some of the most inspiring essay writing movies of all time – The History Boys. The montages, the Dominic Cooper, the 80s music…

You’re feeling better, you’re sitting back at your desk. Then, the realisation that life does not happen in montage form hits. You can’t cut from the stack of library books to the finished piece via The Clash in real life.

Crushed by this damning epiphany, you sink deeper into your pit of despair. Two coffees and as many sentences later, the effects of the fresh air are fast wearing off. Time for a reviving lukewarm shower. With the cooling drips of water trickling down your back, you scurry back to your room and manage to trawl through another 500 words. Four hours to the deadline.

Then, disaster strikes - dinner. For some, hall is a welcome salvation from the library’s migraine-inducing oppression, but for the serial procrastinator, the prospect of spending an hour or two with friends and, more importantly, food. Why would you ever sit alone and snackless?

A (not-entirely guilt-free) lengthy dinner later, the situation is becoming dire. It doesn’t help matters that your jeans are feeling uncomfortably tight after the pain-au-chocolat bread-and-butter-pudding. One hour to go.

You spent the last half an hour making a Motivational Playlist, consisting mainly of Psy and Glee. You pour yourself a little G & T and finally, with help from a little bit o’ Beyoncé, the end is in sight. Powering through, you reach the final sentence. The final frontier. The home run. Something pithy; an eloquent summation of your carefully crafted argument.

Let’s face it, no one can master the art of writing The Final Sentence. So steal someone else’s.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.