Beginning in September, there's a shift in the atmosphere around campus. People get busier. The circles under our eyes get darker. It becomes harder to find that perfect study spot in the library. The demand for Scantrons grows, and caffeine consumption is off the charts.
This period of dread and despair lasts throughout the semester. We call it “midterm season.”
College is stressful. And it’s not supposed to be easy. But when a classmate mentions that they stayed up all night to study for the exam, or when your best friend tells you that she is on the verge of a mental breakdown because oh my god she literally has so much to do, we hardly bat an eye. Because that’s normal, right? Everyone does it. College is HARD.
It’s meant to be a transformative period in our lives. We’re learning how to survive in the “real world.” But sometimes it feels as though we’re only learning how to function on as little sleep as possible, or how to juggle countless priorities when the one thing we should really be prioritizing is ourselves.
Perhaps it is normal. But it shouldn’t be.
Maybe it’s because the United States' education system sucks. Maybe it’s because our professors enjoy making their students suffer. Maybe Betsy DeVos is part of the Illuminati and her mission is to make the lives of college students a living hell.
But we’re the ones who glorify it. We’re the ones who label it as normal. We’ve all had that conversation — you know, the one where you and your friends fight over who has the biggest workload — more times than we’d like to admit. It’s like a game, and whoever is the most stressed wins.
It’s toxic. Yes, we have much, arguably too much, to worry about. But when we create an environment in which students compete for unofficial superlatives like “busiest” or “most stressed,” we all lose.
The atmosphere that we’ve created for ourselves isn’t healthy. We pour all of our time and energy into our work, and at the end of the day, we have nothing left to give to ourselves. When we do take a break, we feel guilty, but if we don’t, we suffer. Is a perfect GPA really worth the toll it takes on our mental health?
