To the Working Undergrad

Hey. Working in college sucks. But you're doing the damn thing and that's impressive as hell. No one is going to come out and congratulate you because to the rest of the world you're doing a very common thing. But in reality, you are doing something so amazing and keeping it all (mostly) together.

Working late nights to come home, sleep for five hours, and still manage to feed and bathe yourself is AMAZING. Gold star to you. Or sometimes you sacrifice the shower for an extra fifteen minutes of sleep. Look at you managing your time, you go. Sometimes you don't have enough time to make breakfast so you justify the eight dollar coffee and bagel duo but damnit you got up, out of bed and went to class even though you're exhausted, GO YOU.

Then you have to do it all again the next day. By the time Friday comes, you're running on so little sleep and so much caffeine that your eye does that really cute thing where it twitches for two hours. But after work, you have at least three 21st birthday parties to attend. You're tired though, so should you really go or give in to the sleep you need? Then you go anyway because the little devil that lives on your shoulder in a mud hut built of tears you cried during panic attacks and coffee grounds tells you that all of your friendships will rip apart at the seams if you don't put in the work to maintain them. So then, crawling into bed at two o'clock in the morning again, you set your alarm for eight a.m. on a Saturday because you have a philanthropic event, another shift at work, six homework assignments and three freelance projects that you need to squeeze into the next 24 hours and try not to cry in the process, but then you do cry-twice. Just an example, hypothetically.

Sometimes you fail, too. Sometimes the alarm goes off five times and you still can't get into an upright position let alone walk to class and so you skip, even though attendance is mandatory. Even though you need those points for your grade because you did the midterm paper at midnight when you got off work and you're not exactly proud of the work you did. Or you skip the birthday party because you are overwhelmed and human and just need to crawl into bed and call your mom long after you know she's gone to bed. You also remember that you haven't been to the gym this week but also haven't eaten on a regular enough basis to be sure you wouldn't pass out if you tried. These are the times that can crush you if you let them.

You missed class and muddled through a job that on a normal day you love and bailed on celebrating friends that mean the world to you. You had to ask for an extension on some of your freelance work because if you don't get at least seven hours of sleep one night this week, there will be a full-scale, kindergartener-on-the-first-day-of-school meltdown.

But you haven't failed! You give yourself that one night to sleep in and that one morning to blowdry your hair and put on makeup instead of trying to hide the fact that you didn't have time with glasses and a scarf. You gave yourself a piece of autonomy over your schedule and a refresher that humans NEED and you're good to go again.

What I'm saying is that working in college is hard. People do it for a million different reasons. But as many a sorority sister has reminded me, you cannot pour from an empty cup. You are working and committing yourself to a hundred different things at once because they are the things that you love. If you didn't love them, you wouldn't be so stressed to make everything work when it's humanly impossible. Just please give yourself a break, and remember to give yourself the freedom to be fully present in the things you do, even if it means sitting some of them out.

in short, you're amazing! Don't stop being amazing but don't hold yourself to perfection because that is a failure waiting to happen.