The other day I ran into a friend that was looking a lot more like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer than she usually did. Upon interrogation, she confessed that she had been blowing her nose pretty much non-stop the whole day and was feeling pretty sick. She then proceeded to brag about how she’d taken her temperature, which was through the roof, but still managed to finish her ten-page paper that was due that day. Admittedly, this was kind of impressive, but ultimately what was the point of making herself suffer? I realized my friend’s comment could have just as well come from the mouth of any other student on a college campus in the United States because, I realized, health has turned into some abstract thing that often comes in last place compared to other priorities in our jam-packed college lives. I myself am guilty of pushing my health to the side when I have more immediate consequences to consider. Last week I was at the doctor’s office when my doctor asked if I’d seen the neurologist that she’d recommended yet. I had told my doctor about my frequent migraines during my last visit and she immediately referred to me the best neurologist she knew. I thankfully hadn’t had a migraine the past two weeks but did have an exam and two essays and so those ended up coming first even though I knew I’d probably get another migraine pretty soon and have to deal with the pain like I always did, as well as waste a bunch of time just laying in bed. But at least my essays were finished right? One look at my doctor and I immediately felt embarrassed. Why had I been avoiding dealing with a health issue that was causing me to lose time spent feeling well because I couldn’t afford the time to seek necessary help? Essentially I would just be wasting more time by not dealing with an issue I thought would take up time to deal with. Which sounds rather counterintuitive, because it is.
The problem is, we don’t often pause to see things this way. When you live in an environment where hard work is defined as pushing past all obstacles at all costs and where success is placed above wellbeing, it’s hard to feel justified in slowing down a little when you’re not feeling your best. There’s the feeling that if you slow down, you’ll fall behind. Often it feels like the best thing to do is just push through and finish your assignments plus the ten other things you've committed to outside of school. The fact that you might get burnt out down the road (or even actually develop serious health issues from things like poor diet and lack of sleep) seems distant and hard to grasp when you’re in a pit of work and responsibilities and more of both just keep pouring down on you; we discount the delayed negative consequences due to our more immediate concerns.
But if a car breaks down, or say even just has an issue with the breaks, do you just keep trying to drive it? Probably not. You get it fixed before you use it so that you don't kill yourself. Sometimes the car breaks down so completely that it literally cannot function and you need a new one. This sucks but is generally ok because there are many new cars available on the market or a friend could maybe give you a lift. Unfortunately there are no replaceable human bodies and brains available for sale or even on loan. This seems obvious yet there is a culture on college campuses of sacrificing sleep, nutrition, and mental health for the sake of academics and extracurricular commitments, a culture where things like not having time for a meal during finals season is completely acceptability and even normal.
What is actually pretty ironic about the development of this type of atmosphere on college campuses is the idea that this is what you must do if you want to do well. Everyone around you is living this way too, so it gives you the artificial sense that you’re doing it right. However, getting enough sleep and enough (healthy) food and taking some time to pay attention to your health at the expense of work could actually help you perform everything more effectively and efficiently. Taking care of yourself is like taking care of a machine---if you take good care of it, it will work better and last longer.
