Relax, Take it Easy

Dearest Readers,
In the midst of this end of the quarter palooza, the students of Ohio University are losing their minds. When any college’s semester/quarter/quadrangle’s is coming to a close, all students start to take the plunge off the deep end. The worst part is, however, you feel guilty for giving yourself a break.
When I am super stressed over [fill in the blank 250 million point project due tomorrow], everyone recommends I take a breather. Take a breather?! If I take a breather now I will get behind in XYZ, then I will fail all my classes, have no career, and end up living cold and alone in a dark alley. Seriously though, melodramatics aside, we don’t allow ourselves a chance to breath, because we are constantly worried about the next thing.
Growing up in the generation of immediate access to everything from news to entertainment, we think in drastically different terms then our predecessors. Everything has to be done now.
The consequence of thinking we can’t give ourselves a break is we don’t actually take productive breaks. We think okay two minute break, let’s go on facebook…and we end up trapped there like computer zombies for the next two hour….whoops….c’mon, we’ve all done it. That time you could have spent actually doing what you wanted to do: calling a friend from home, exercising, knitting, whatever suits your fancy, was instead spent stalking people you barely know. Thus, you feel guiltier for wasting even more time, so you focus harder, and the soul-crushing cycle continues.
So now that I have spent most of this post expressing the problem, you as a responsible reader are probably expecting me to offer up some semblance of a solution. Oh clever reader, you really give me too much credit. All I can say is, I am still struggling to find the solution myself.
I am visiting home this weekend, and I find myself feeling guilty for not doing homework. This is the first time I’ve seen my family in eight weeks, and I can’t stop reading court cases to spend time with them?
Lesson to be learned: College is the time to find the balance. I don’t want us to be the generation of workaholics, so we need to use our breaks wisely. Howabout instead of two hours of work then “five” minutes of facebook, we actually give ourselves an hour to exercise or call a friend. Let’s do something crazy here and actually aim for sanity!
As for me, I’m off to an evening with the family and I will (try) not let myself feel guilty for enjoying it. Tra la la!
Blissfully yours,
Adorkable