As I sit, writing these words and intermittently getting distracted by my surroundings, I am not sitting in the present time. That might have been in the present a month ago, a week ago, or even a couple days ago. Now, however, I sit in the future. I am surrounded by the accoutrements of another year of college: the mounds of books, the scattered pieces of packaging labeled “Amazon” and the chaos of “getting organized.” While I am not there just yet, the future is nonetheless on my mind and covering my room - covering my whole house, if I’m honest. It is a bit terrifying. And when I say “terrifying,” I do not mean some fear of the unknown; I didn’t even feel that emotion the first time around. It is more accurate to say that I'm afraid of myself.
I, along with many of my peers, fell into a sort of lazy complacence over the summer. This not a bad or uncommon thing to do; we are in the time of life when our vocation is to be a student. This means obliterating our minds during the fall, winter and spring. It would be cruelty not to begrudge us poor souls a season of rest after all that self-abuse. Yet this rest comes with a hard price and right now the payment is due. We must once again cultivate wholesome study habits and learn to forego all free time. The question weighs heavily on us: Will we be able to meet the demands of the world we are reentering?
Maybe. I’m not sure if this article is supposed to be motivating or not, but I am certainly not going to pretend I know you, the reader, well enough to predict your future. Sorry. Life's tough that way. Whether you do well this semester depends on factors you might not even know, let alone control. The one thing that you can control is the expectations you set for yourself. Where the rubber meets the road, we are talking about class load, jobs, extracurriculars, etc. My recommendation is to essentially set yourself up for failure by filling your schedule to the eyeballs.
There is obviously some wisdom in a more balanced scheduled; that mentality optimizes for the greatest likelihood of success. It is a tempting offer for the risk-averse among us. Are the additional two credits really worth living a backbreaking lifestyle rather than a manageable one? You might whisper to yourself, “It is just two more credits, that’s barely anything.” You would be wrong.
To explain why you’re wrong, I want you to think about the older, wiser advisors of your life. You have probably heard from them the well-worn adage: “Kids at your age think they’re invincible.” I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell don’t feel invincible. I would really like to have a bit of that confidence. I would like to know that when the summer months end, I will be able to rise to the challenge of education. I want a firm foundation to stand up on. That’s why I think you need to occasionally shoot yourself in the foot when looking at your schedule. It requires that you spend a few months of life drowning in uncertainty, but the reward is sureness for a lifetime.
