By Emily Williams, Assistant Features Editor
College is hard. Yes, you can make that argument for just about anything, depending on who you are and what you’re going through, and maybe as college students, we’ve yet to face our hardest days in the “real world.” But that absolutely does not change the fact that life within the bubble of a university is no picnic. At times, it has the potential to drain you of what makes you who you are in the first place.
With tear-filled eyes and over a couple of Culver’s milkshakes, my best friend and I recently took the time to sit and talk about how hard life can be and how easy it is to lose sight of yourself in the hectic, confusing and seemingly-impossible circumstances sometimes.
In these times, when we’re flooded with assignments and deadlines, when we’re trying to balance relationships and work in a healthy way, when we’re forced to choose between two really good things, when we just can’t seem to get the right amount of sleep at night, when we just feel like we don’t quite measure up, I think it’s important for us to remember this: It’s OK.
There will be nights when you physically cannot hold your eyes open any longer, and on those nights, I think it’s OK to set your literature book aside, turn out the light and get a good night’s rest. The work you need to do will get done because you always do it, but when your body is screaming at you for sleep and for nourishment, you need to listen to it and get some shut-eye.
You need to make time for the things you love. You need to read, not only the required text for your classes that week, but that book that’s collecting dust on your shelf that you bought during syllabus week. You need to sit out in the sunshine and breathe in the fresh air during a study break. You need to laugh with your friends over something really stupid while you should probably be doing your biology homework.
Education is important, working hard is important and applying yourself is important, but you will never be able to live up to what you are capable of if you are completely and utterly exhausted, mentally and physically. I think in college we sometimes forget how important it is to take care of ourselves. And that is most definitely an easy thing to do, with a chore list a mile high, rent to pay and grades to maintain. But sometimes the most productive thing you can do is take a nap. Take a nap, wake up and go at it again. Because you’re only human. You’re no robot (but how cool would that be?)
So, about 10 minutes from now, (after you’re finished wasting your existence reading about my thoughts for the week) when you start to feel the fear of not measuring up creep in, you should take a deep breath, do something you love, eat something outside the boundaries of your diet and go easy on yourself. You’re doing the best you can.