I have recently decided that the trials and tribulations of college can be boiled down to one question: to go out, or to do work?
It seems simple. You’d think that it would be an easy, or at least uncomplicated, decision. You’d also think that, as a junior, I’d have figured it out by now. But for someone like me, who can always do some sort of work or go some sort of out, it’s a constant problem.
I’ve done my research and found that there are two general schools of thought — points of view, which conveniently transform into cliched devil and angel figures, who sit perched atop my shoulders as I debate my night’s activities.
The first ideology, adopted most often by second-semester seniors and my junior friends who already spend too much time at Smoke’s, is that college is too great of an experience to waste being stressed about school. Its subscribers are the ones that, over a game of Quincy, tell me, “Looking back a year from now, you’ll be happy you decided to stay out … You have the rest of your life to work.” College is about friends and growing up and figuring out who you are before beginning the rest of your life, not staying cooped up in the library.
And yet, at the same time, I (mostly) love my schoolwork. Sure, the occasional Physics quiz or early morning (read: 11 a.m.) recitation really suck, but on the whole, I’m obsessed with my major. And while I feel “fear-of-missing-out” pangs when my friends are all out together without me, or when my phone is buzzing with emails making boozy plans that I won’t participate in, the same is true for class — will I look back a year from now, wishing that I had gotten up for just one more morning lecture with that brilliant professor, actually done the reading or tried just a little harder on a particular assignment?
I suppose, in the end, it’s a balancing act. You’ve got to learn to prioritize and, most importantly, not waste your time wishing to you were doing something else.
'til next week,
SB
