Students are drowning

Students are drowning. Students are drowning in homework, study groups, work, club involvement, dating, sleeping, weekend life, sporting events, eating, cleaning their rooms, chatting with mom on the phone, showering, grocery shopping. It’s true. Students are drowning. All over campus. And it’s not stopping any time soon.

Why is it that we all feel the need to take on so much? Why can’t we just be happy studying what we love and doing a few things we love and being with people we love? Because that, in and of itself, is exhausting. And we have to graduate in time. And we have to have experience on our resume. And we have to be cool enough to get invited to stuff.

So, we drown.

We all make it by simply trying to stay afloat in the millions of things we have to do.

Isn’t that what college is about? About taking on so much, that it’s like somebody placed a book on your head to balance while you are already struggling to stay afloat in a lake while holding a 50-pound weight. Have homework? Classes to attend? Professor’s office hours to attend? Work? Exercise? Sleep? Too late. You’re already drowning…

So how do we change this?

A few years ago, in the middle of the one of my hardest and busiest semesters ever, a friend gave me some novel advice: “It’s okay to say ‘No.’ It’s okay to just do some of the things you love and just be a student. You are a student first, after all.”

I had never thought of that. Which probably was why it took me until then to realize that I wasn’t even loving everything I was doing at the time, anyway. So why was I even doing all of it?

I think students everywhere, no matter what they’re involved in, no matter what they love, should re-evaluate exactly what they are doing. Do you love playing intramural soccer, being secretary of the Japanese club, have schoolwork for 16 credits, holding game nights at your apartment every Friday, working 15 hours a week as a waiter, while also volunteering with Best Buddies a few days a week?

Maybe. But probably, you mostly just feel like you are drowning 95 percent of the time.

I challenge all of you Aggies to take control. Don’t feed into the stigma, the status quo, the lie that we all have to be superhuman, that we all have to be involved in at least nine other things besides school to be a successful person. College is about discovering yourself, and discovering what you really love and what you really want to do. Don’t listen to everyone who says that. Because, most likely, that’s just what they’re hearing from everyone else.

You have at least eight different semesters do try everything out. Don’t try it all out in one.

Don’t drown in college. Enjoy it.

— mandy.m.morgan@aggiemail.usu.edu