How College Students Protest Exhaustion: A Vicious Cycle

As I sit here and think about the homework assignments I have not done, the test that I have not studied for, and the essays I have not written, I can’t help but blame myself.

Just last night I had a solid two hours to do homework, plus another two hours of time where I would be half asleep but could still get something done. Instead, I watched Netflix and sat with my computer on my lap, maybe writing a total of one page for a paper over the course of three hours. Then this morning I realized I am my own worst enemy.

Yes, the idea of the exhausted college student is romanticized, and I agree that needs to stop because we are all exhausted. But half of the problem is us. And by that I most certainly mean me.

When did it become cool to not do the reading? When did it become cool to do all the homework at the end of the semester, or as close to the due date as we could? When did it become cool to submit papers quite literally minutes before the cut off? I think it happens somewhere between the first day of class and the end of freshman year. That is when college students realize that everyone else waits, everyone else procrastinates, so they may as well too.

Granted, there will always be that week or two in the semester when everything is due and everything gets submitted barely on time because it is barely done because it was all just too much. But what about the other 12 weeks? Why did we stop caring about the other 12 weeks when we could get everything in on time and we could read for class and do the homework?

I think a part of the reason is that we, as college students, have accepted being exhausted. We think that being in college means never sleeping, and barely getting the homework in on time. So that is what we do. It’s a vicious cycle.

Everyone nowadays complains about stereotypes and how much that can hurt because they are never entirely accurate. But what about the stereotype of the exhausted college student that everyone seems to want to fit into? This needs to end as well.

Even if it is my senior year in college, I intend to make a change. As ingrained as habits can be, and as much as we all deserve a night to watch Netflix for hours, I think it is more than plausible to find the time to get all of the schoolwork that needs done completed on time, and done well.