Emma’s Dilemma of the week: burnout. It will be a meta dilemma, as I will be simultaneously enacting the very subject I discuss as I discuss it. Why oh why has my brain stopped working? You would think that after an almost full week break, during which I left the house a grand total of four times, I would have gotten some rest. Sadly this just wasn’t the case. It’s 4 PM as I write this column and I’ve already been awake for 12 hours. Some call it procrastination . . . I call it a calculated risk, only I miscalculated severely. So far it has resulted in a paper that looks as though it was baked in an Easy Bake oven.
And the week isn’t over yet.
We go, we go and when the going gets tough we keep going. It’s hard to imagine that there can be so many demands on every single one of us, but truth be told I have yet to encounter someone who is going into this last week of the semester relieved, or relaxed or having paced themselves. It’s hard to gain perspective when you’re just a hamster on a wheel, trying to keep up with all the other hamsters on all the other wheels.
Maybe it’s the holiday season that’s done this to me — but I’m not a Scrooge or even a Grinch. I’m more like Max, the downtrodden dog that follows the Grinch around, too tired to think for himself.
In a way it’s some consolation that this exhaustion is a school-wide epidemic, namely in that it makes a person feel a bit more normal to be so crazy. On another level it’s complete madness that we’ve all made it this far, and half of us don’t know to start something until the night before it’s due and the other half of us is so ashamed that they do know, but pretend not to. Hopkins has always been competitive — this much is true. But when did it become so oppressive?
Part of it is the structure of this term. It’s only a couple days, to be sure, but somehow the Thanksgiving break feels tantamount to giving Sisyphus a momentary reprieve before letting the rock finally crush him into the bowels of Hades. I digress, but that’s really all I can do anymore.
And because every burnout piece needs a little pop culture stream of consciousness: I did like the new Harry Potter film, even though the scene with Harry and Hermione making out was a bit too shimmery. I’m also very excited to see that Enrique Inglesias is making a comeback with his rockin’ new hit “I Like It”. He can be my hero anytime. I really want to see Burlesque and am not ashamed. I ate four blueberry Poptarts today and none of them had frosting. I want a bike for Christmas.
And then for the rational recovery paragraph: There’s a bunch of stuff on the a capella Scene this week, with Octopedes on Thursday and All Nighters on Saturday, so definitely check them out. And keep in mind, the nice thing about exams is that in between the tests, you have a chance to hang out on campus with no school. And then, just when that gets old, it’s time for break and we can all go home and get some sleep.
The conclusion: we’re all stressed to the point of incoherency. Take some time to get coffee with a friend or go to Stressbusters. It’s the little things that sustain a person through fraught times such as these.
