During finals, last fall quarter, my life experienced serious turmoil. I mean, in the span of two days, my roommate accidentally spilled water on my laptop. My luggage was stolen at the airport, even after I’d asked someone to watch over it. I found out that I am a celiac, or otherwise put, I was cut off from eating the foods that normally get me through finals, during finals. The list goes on.
But, instead of getting to every single 'L' I took, let me tell you about the needle that broke the camel's back. The chief 'L', if you will.
I lost my planner.
Saying that losing my planner was the worst part of all may sound like it is both coming from a place of privilege and just an exaggeration. But that could not be further from the case. For example, having to deal with my defective laptop was obviously not fun. I am a philosophy major. Which honestly follows to identify a lot of things about me. But in this context, all it means is that the phrase ‘finals week’ is essentially synonymous with saying, "you have five fairly intense papers due." But guess what you need in order to turn those papers in when it's 2018?—a laptop. (I’m not ignoring the computer lab, but if you commute to campus, it is not going to cut it.)
As you can imagine then, my laptop being ruined was sort of an issue. And believe it or not, I literally hand wrote every single one of those essays. It sucked.
Not to mention, finals week is just simply not the time in life to be sitting at the Apple store, without an appointment, trying to figure out how to fix your laptop. It is just not. And the possibility of having to pay an arm and a leg to fix the water damage literally kept me up at night. It was basically a triple whammy.
Yet, I still think that losing my planner was more devastating.
I have been underplaying the situation. Considering, I never actually lost my planner. I accidentally left it my discussion section and quickly emailed my T.A. to see if she had seen it. She had, so I called a friend who was on campus to grab it for me.
When in the classroom my discussion was held, my friend called me, only to let me know she had found my planner. Except not the whole thing. She actually had only found the remains of my planner, sitting in the trash can. As some, malicious person, had decided to rip every page I had used, out of the planner, and keep it as their own.
The moment she told me this, tears immediately flood down my face.
When my laptop was messed up, I intuitively grabbed my planner; when I was losing my mind about my bag being stolen from the airport, I grabbed my planner; and when anything remotely stressful would happen in my life I would, without hesitation, grab my planner.
Contrary to my sadness surrounding my stolen things or broken laptop, losing my planner was never about the material it was, i.e a really aesthetically pleasing notebook that has an expanded calendar in it. Not at all. It was about what my planner did for me: give me mental peace. Even when nothing is in my control, my planner lets me organize my life in a way that gives me control.
I planned all other parts of my life with and through my planner. Up until the moment I heard the news that it was gone for good; nothing that had gone wrong seemed wholly bad considering I had my planner to plan how to make the situation better.
Of course, I got a new planner as soon as I could. It will never replace the one I had, but it is necessary and will have to do.
The moral of the story is, foremost, never steal someone’s planner—ever. Second, if you do not have a planner, I absolutely recommend getting one.
Your Monday through Sunday will never be messy again!!
