I was talking to a friend of mine the other night and he just looked at me and said, “I’m completely burnt out” and that’s when I realized that the mid-semester blues were a real thing. Unfortunately midterms blues have leaked their music notes into the pumpkin spice lattes that fill the hands of college students everywhere.
Every day, we college kids wake up with a million things on our plates and begin the countdown until we can crawl back into our beds and get a few more hours of sleep. The mid-semester blues start to hit us mid-October when we realize that midterms are going to happen no matter how many times we click our heels together and wish to be home. After pulling several all nighters, spending our life savings on espresso shots, and living in the library basement, midterms have ended and you would think that your life has automatically turned cheerful and stress-free again.
I am jealous of the people who’s lives did this. Mine and most people I know were not as fortunate to have this happen to us. Instead, we slept for most of the weekend after midterms thinking that would turn our brains back into being functional.
When Monday morning rolled around, alarms all over campus rang to wake up grumpy students. Most of them, including me, will hit snooze several times, skip breakfast, get dressed in the dark and then slowly walk to that dreaded 8 am. And it doesn’t help that you pass other students with the same tired expression carrying their books like they weigh 500 pounds. It doesn’t just stop there. It gets worse. With every class, you sigh and count down the minutes, you procrastinate homework, and begin to think about how great life would be without school.
From a person who loves school with all her heart, I have even had these thoughts about dropping out (of course I never would). But let’s face the facts: school is hard. Whether you are an art major or pre-med— school is hard. We all have projects, tests, and essays. We all stay up late. We all try to balance social lives and personal time. We go and go and go until we can’t go anymore. We get to this point and just want to sleep but instead we have to continue to go to class and keep up with everything that is going on.
The mid semester blues happen to the best of us. We have the thoughts of Thanksgiving and Christmas looming over us. Weeks of sleep and time with our friends and families sound so nice. But we have to get over this mid semester illness or else a month will seem like 10 years. The only advice that can be given is to stay positive! Turn on that coffee pot, get all your work done, and wake up each morning like it’s the beginning of the semester.
