College is a great and wonderful thing. You get to take great classes. You get to meet new friends. You get to experience the equivalent of a star's heat death after you decide to put too much onto your plate at one time. Yay. College can be a wonderful blessing, but it's important to understand why you're there. That's where I'm at right now. I'm a junior in college and stressing over how I'll make it through the next few weeks. A relatable feeling for most.
Exams are upon us. Pressure is mounting for the "future." That rather ambiguous term which all college students understand, but just don't "get." It's a feeling of not being sure where life is leading. It's wanting to do this or that. The only real problem is knowing exactly what "that" is. The specifics are vague. Life doesn't have blinking arrow signs that say, do this, or do that.
So sometimes, to compensate, we add all these things on. Things that sound like "us" things. Things that bring us closer to friends. Things that help give us some extra money. Sometimes we write for a company which gives us very little incentive to write for them, and we do it anyway because maybe we'll be writers someday. Heh, don't know anyone who does that. Anyway.
I'm guilty of tacking too much onto my schedule. I'm a student first and foremost (though it rarely feels like it). I work at the library. I write for the Odyssey. I'm a ministry coordinator for Concordia. We all do too much sometimes.
It's easy to wear your exhaustion like a badge of honor. You shouldn't, but, it's understandable. We do so much, and the more we do, the more we look like we're some sort of misplaced hero. Or so we think. We actually look like we have more bags underneath our eyes than you can find in a Target checkout.
I get it. There's so much you have to do. What happens though, when you do too much? Everything starts falling apart. It's easy to get caught up in that moment, too. Sometimes you miss deadlines. Sometimes you write a paper the night before. You get low, and lower because it becomes a cycle of falling apart. Don't let it happen to you.
Burning out isn't fun. It isn't glamorous. I'm there right now and I hate it. Falling apart isn't something to strive for. It's something to avoid, and sometimes that means just letting go. Finding more competent hands to place something in. Sometimes it means being honest. The important thing is to find help, and find solace.
Solace is like sitting on a park bench and listening to the soft rustling of the leaves in the afternoon winds. It's hearing the leaves fall to the ground, and scrape along the sidewalk. It's having the time to just sit and listen to those noises. So, I guess what I'm saying is: take the time to listen to the leaves. Find a moment to rest. If your first reaction to what I just said is "Well I don't have time for that," then you're exactly the person I'm talking to.
