Hey You!

Yes you, undergrad who’s on their way back to school for another year, it’s a really crucial day!

Today is the day that seven different color pens come out to fill in the hauntingly blank lines of the new Walmart planner! The week before school starts is almost like a college New Year’s Eve, full of muttered resolutions, the promise to get more sleep and spend more time actually studying. I am no different, I have three years of broken promises to make up for this year, three years of taking too many classes, adding that extra job, agreeing to one more commitment and ending up in the situation that prompted the moth article and the vomiting.

An incoming freshman asked me once what the biggest mistake freshman made was and I was left remembering 2013. As an upstart 18-year-old, I believed that my hours could be scheduled down to the half hour, I had time for everything and everyone, and I didn’t need to sleep. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that you can’t do it, the human body and the human spirit can endure, but you shouldn’t. In this well planned out equation I forget one critical thing: if you don’t take care of yourself, you will burn out. Freshman come in focused only on how to move forward, to improve, to gain opportunity, and while this is a great thing, it rarely comes with balance. My biggest mistake as a freshman was to look down on those who had balance.

Your undergraduate years are the first time that you are solely responsible to form your own habits and choices. These years are incredibly important when it comes to self-identity and how we treat ourselves. It is also incredibly easy to spend these four years focusing only on what will come after them. The most important part of the undergraduate experience is learning to appreciate the moment and to value yourself. Amidst the midterms and term papers are snatches of self-discovery, moments of triumph and disappointment, defining moments, key relationships, and a lot of coffee. It is these things that begin to shape us as individuals and too often it is these things that are overlooked due to overloading.

To do well in college doesn’t require overloaded semesters and three jobs, it requires learning the lesson of balance. It hinges on the discovery that your health and welfare are a crucial part of learning and the college experience. It’s about learning to value long showers and the second cup of coffee. It’s about deciding that you’re worth the extra 45 minutes it takes to work out, to write poetry, to have lunch with a friend or to find a new Pandora station. If our generation takes the time to understand their worth and treat themselves accordingly we will have a much healthier and more balanced future.

The way we treat ourselves becomes the catalyst to how we behave in the workplace, what we teach our children, and our own long-term health. So amongst the rush of syllabus week, please make sure to remember that you are worth a time investment. You are worth the time it takes to stay healthy, you as a person is more important than you as a GPA, and nothing in this school defines your worth.

Good luck in the first week and don’t be afraid to take a moment for “you time!”

You’re worth it.