During freshman year, I turned over a new leaf. I started going to the gym, I started actually eating like an adult (besides the occasional Mickey Mouse chicken nugget meals), and I stopped procrastinating doing my homework and studying for tests. Socially, however, I was just as boring and anti-social as I was in high school, and although this meant my grades were superb, it also meant that I was considered pretty abnormal in the university world. This new process worked out wonderfully until we hit summer and I realized having two online classes spread out between Summer A and Summer B meant there was a lot of time to sit around, do nothing, and ultimately have an existential crisis that would make the most stable person lose their mind.
For my entire freshman year, I was called lame and boring for not going out partying, and essentially dedicating way too much time to my studies. So for the summer, I decided to do what everyone was telling me to do: go out. This social experiment resulted in a hangover that has lingered way longer than a weekend and, in fact, is now crawling its way halfway through my fall semester. This is what I call the Summer Hangover.
The Summer Hangover, coincidentally, has almost nothing to do with alcohol. The Summer Hangover can be defined as, “a sense of lackadaisical non-motivation, brought about by limited, to no mental stimulation, and cultivated by alcohol and bad club music.”
Okay, so it has a little to do with alcohol.
My Summer Hangover means I have, essentially, left my brain somewhere, either underneath a bar, or at the bottom of a bottle, sometime in July. And although it has been a good four weeks into fall semester, I still have to obsessively check what room number I’m going to for class and I’m still completely clueless as to what textbook goes to what course. As exams creep up and I find myself hunched over my dining room table with a myriad of highlighters, sticky notes and a pencil in my mouth, I find that the Summer Hangover’s very prevalent symptom of non-motivation is hanging over my head like a rain cloud.
The Summer Hangover is an extremely dangerous predicament. It is the cause of procrastination and the all-too-familiar mantra of “I have plenty of time, I’ll get it done later.” Note to self: no, you do not and no, you won’t. And although you may lock yourself in a library with a giant coffee and all your textbooks, you’ll find yourself staring off into space, daydreaming about everything and anything that is most definitely not Mass Comm Law.
My only hope for salvation is that somehow, my brain and motivation returns to me soon. Maybe stumbling, maybe a little beat up from its summer vacation, but for my GPA’s sake, I hope it returns to me soon. I must say, I’m quite looking forward to being boring again.
