Don’t stretch yourself too thin
There is a monster on campus that you should be aware of as we roll into another beautiful Spring semester. It’s lying dormant among the population like a virus waiting to spread through syllabi, printable schedules, and the ever growing sound of loose leaf notebook paper twisting to the next blank page as each new class begins. It’s called CSD, College Self-Destruction, and it doesn’t affect those bush-league students who are here for the 1 a.m. beer and pizza runs. It affects you.
But you’re a firecracker, right? You’re ready for roll call. You’ve got your books pre-footnoted, you’ve got pens with back up inks taped on them, you can field strip a stapler and reload it blind folded, and you solve quadratic equations in your sleep. You’ve got the perfect twelve hour a week job so that you can save up that little money for the nights Downtown where you’ll be hobnobbing with the big leaguers; those college kids who know everyone and have been here since you can remember. And who knows, maybe you’ll be in the cool slot this semester. You’re ready to fire this puppy up and burn on into the summer, aren’t you? Sure, you are.
You may not know it, but the virus is already creeping through your ambitious veins. CSD happens when you’ve overloaded yourself and begin to lose sight of the college objective. Rather than learn, we tend to strive toward making the grade in order to bolster our GPA and experiential transcripts. This is a hollow notion, and it eats up a lot of good students. Virginia Greene was a Junior Computer Science Major who was the president of an RSO, the PR Chair of CAB, had a full course load and a job at Pet Smart when she suffered an anxiety attack on her way from the library to the residence halls.
“I didn’t realize the stress was that bad,” Greene said, “my chest was hurting and it was hard to breath. I called my HMO and they told me hang up and dial 911 so I did.”
At best, College Self-Destruction can make you miserable and keep you stressed for an entire semester. The trenches of academia tower above you from the morning when you wake up to the time you pass out on your best friend’s futon. The work piles up eventually and you either rush them and do a weak job or you pick out the important assignments and hope to squeeze out a satisfactory grade. Either way, you forget to learn how to do anything but keep your head above the water.
I am a recovering victim of CSD, so I know this is true. As a resolution for the new year I’ve come up with a number of ways to reduce the effects of CSD in the way of finding a cure. Try cutting the fat out of your schedule, and make learning the priority rather than passing. Don’t lace up for college like you’re being dropped into the Cambodian jungle. Create a personal dialogue with your professors so that they understand your misgivings about certain assignments and curb your anger as the work piles up. Retreat if things get too thick, re-evaluate, and then retry. The most important thing I’ve discovered comes from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” which stresses that every battle is won before it is ever fought. As you begin the semester make sure that your course load is manageable and that your extracurriculars are fun and easy. Learn to say ‘no’ to possible social obligations that get in the way.
These are all things that you know already, aren’t they. Sure they are. I knew them too. But in the crossfire of new courses, new teachers, new friends, and a new year, even the smartest students need reminding every once and a while. That’s the real cure. Just a friendly reminder.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Jan 18 2008. Filed under Opinion.
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