I was at university for six and a half years. I studied a variety of things, from the Australian Constitution to the formulation of a social jurisprudence in the Bridget Jones books.

While studying at the university, I honed one skill in particular. I became very good at working to deadlines. I can feel a deadline. I can sense it. At the start of the semester, I would write down the deadlines in my new diary with my new pen and I would know when they were and I was certain that this year I would start studying, researching, or writing several weeks before the due date.

There's a scene in the upcoming movie Happy Feet, which a group of us saw yesterday at a charity screening, where a penguin is terrified of jumping off a cliff. "It's okay", he says to himself, "Trick yourself". Then, teetering on the edge of the cliff face, he shouts "Look over there!" at which point he looks backwards while walking forwards, saying "Where?" and topples over the cliff.

The joke is funny because you can't trick yourself. You can't tell yourself the deadline for your essay is two weeks earlier than it actually is. You can't tell yourself the exam isn't on the 30th, it's on the third. You get really good at knowing how long you're going to need and you leave it until then. Then you research and practice and study and write and then on the Friday of the due date you submit your work and you go to the pub and by Monday you don't remember a single thing about the entire subject matter you've been learning about for the last six months.

So I've been trained like this - the bad habits of a tertiary education often come in the form of caffeine and nicotine, but in my case it's definitely an inability to work without a deadline, and a habit of leaving everything up to the last minute.

The Comedy Festival is in April. In university lingo, that's getting close to the time where you ask for an extension.

Better get myself down to the library.

Also, why is this conversation happening? (Or in the stupendously irritating Age)? I know why. It's because these kinds of people are so loathed and detested by women with any self regard whatsoever that they don't actually know any, which is sad because there is no better feeling than laughing tea out of your nose because your friends are the funniest people on earth. For the record, two of the top three funniest people I know are women, and the other one is frankly just an unfortunate product of genetics.