College is officially in full swing. Whether it's been for less than a week or over a month now, there's a good chance you've felt it; that sense of stress that though school has barely begun, you're already falling behind. You can't seem to find that one class' syllabus online, you've sent a flurry of emails to professors who are swamped with similar requests from others for help, and you've definitely felt the envy at other kids who somehow seem to have everything in order (seriously, what spells did they cast for being this prepared??). To say that it's becoming stressful is an understatement.
With all of that being said, is it really a wonder that we students savor our downtime? That small respite that allows us to shut down our brains and do little to nothing, even if for half an hour, and give ourselves a chance to recuperate before the next class comes. It might not seem like it, but this is our full-time job. We go to work, put in hours, have lunch breaks, and come home every day; though instead of getting paid we pay and are rewarded in knowledge like some strange and twisted reverse paradox.
Don't get the wrong idea that I'm complaining and going on a justice rant about how college is a hellish institution and should be destroyed. On the contrary, I enjoy being in college; the freedom of choice, friends who share many similar interests, much more relaxed atmosphere in comparison to high school are certainly some of the pros of attending university. But like anything, it isn't perfect.
I'm not going to point fingers here, for that is not my intention. What I am trying to suggest is for our peers to recognize just how important downtime is to us college students. Science has even gone so far as to back us up on this. Laying around doing nothing might seem unproductive, but recent studies have actually shown that activities like meditation, daydreaming, or even just sitting with our eyes closed can help reinforce memories made and ingrain information learned more readily into the brain.
Yes we're young, but we're not all capable of being like the Energizer Bunny, studying for great lengths of time without so much as moving. The brain can take up to as much as 20% of the body's energy capacity while in use, after all. Paired with what seems to be a perpetual lack of sleep, there's a reason we'd like nap time to be a thing again. In layman's terms, downtime is when we hit the Refresh button on the personal web browsers that are our brains for one more go.
We're stressed because we want to do well, and having to sign up for three different classes' online supplements by Friday of the first week or else risk being dropped certainly isn't helping matters. We're not asking for classes to have their difficulty ceilings lowered by 90%; we know what we signed up for. We would just like a bit of understanding. Even machines need to recharge eventually.
(Scientific information credit of SciLearn.com).
