As I’ve been thrown into April, the month of spring showers (likely college students’ tears) and daily tornado watches and exams and papers and pressing deadlines and letter-grade-determining group projects (takes heavy breath), I’ve found myself repeating this phrase, both to myself and those around me asking about school or my day, that has more or less become my mantra: “If I can just get through the week.” This soundtrack to my semester has replayed in such a vigorous cycle that getting through the week has extended to every single week of the semester. Every. Single. Week. By that point, I’m running on fumes. I’m on autopilot.
“Getting through” something, for me, has never really inspired much determination or perseverance. It asks for noncommittal effort, seven days of half-attempts that, for some reason, leave me feeling even more spent than days I’ve happily thrown myself into a whirlwind of activities and academics. It makes no sense, but it does.
When you’re on autopilot, you’re so engrossed in haste, in ticking off some checklist, you don’t allow yourself to look up. There’s no awareness or observation of the world around you. No rest.
Naps are a constant in the college equation; actual sleep, normally a sad zero. But rest isn’t physically exclusive. The times I’ve felt most rejuvenated or refreshed never revolved around a good night’s sleep.
When you look to the weekend, a week full of potential becomes a blur of monotony, and a day becomes just a color-coded date in your planner. And then, when you’ve “gotten through” the weeks, your freshman year is over. Regret is one of the most suffocating feelings. Maybe that’s because, looking back, we lock eyes with ourselves and realize we only looked forward, and all we can do now is observe missed opportunities we can’t spin around and grab.
Attempt. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard this word expressed with a positive connotation. And that confuses me, considering the most exciting successes and opportunities spring from this action. If we’re being honest, almost nothing results from lack of trying. Attempts may not always produce the results you expect or want and it may even be devastating, but they also do not equal failure. Finding the confidence to simply try, pouring your heart into something — that builds a person. Regardless of the outcome.
So study, but not too hard. Seek to push yourself to your greatest potential, but don’t allow that desire to morph into self-consuming obsession. Take that 1 a.m. trip to Whataburger when you could maybe study 30 more minutes for a test that, a couple years down the road, will probably never cross your mind the way it haunted yours last week. Life is too beautiful to be distracted by the ugly mess of deadlines and pop quizzes and regrets.
Don’t just get through the week. Make it your week. Every. Single. Week.
