Let’s face it fellow collegiettes – university life is such a struggle! Regardless of the year you’re currently enrolled in, all of us have had some of these experiences. By no means is this article intended to provide a solution to these eternal problems, for they’re a part of what makes up the standard university life. But at the very least we can vent together and form a small community through our mutually-shared experiences, and thereby eliminate our individual feelings of loneliness and isolation from the rest of the student body.
Some may argue that you’re not a true U of T student if you don’t experience the following:
You’re lowering your academic expectations by percentage ranges; you’re led to a dead end. You’re used to getting high marks and don’t accept any grades lower than your personal expectations. Not to mention, you’re used to getting your desired grades with minimal effort, while maintaing a personal life full of laughter and fun. Now you’re happy to be in the high 60 to 70s range, despite having spent numerous days to study for the test.
You can’t get away with procrastination. You’re used to studying the day before the test and still acing it, you even got the bonus question. Now, you’ve become accustomed to investing a whole week’s worth of your time on only one test, and you’re still uncertain of whether or not you’re going to do well on it.
You’re stuck in a daily routine. You have zero time for fun, and even if you make some time for a party here and there, a day-long shopping spree, or even catching up on a couple of your favourite TV shows, you feel incredibly guilty. The entire time you’re not studying, you’re thinking about all the assignments and tests you need to study for and when you are productive with your time, you either day-dream or think of all the fun other people are having while you’re stuck studying. It’s a never-ending cycle, wherein sleeping everything off has become the solution to all and every one of your problems. In fact, sleep has become your best friend. There are times you lie to get out of events because you’d rather sleep for a whole day and catch up on all the sleep you’ve been missing out on for two consecutive weeks.
Your marks are on a never-ending roller coaster. You’re either doing incredibly well in one of your classes and very poorly in another class, or your doing amazing in the first test of one of your courses, but then do poorly on the next one; you manage to continue this interchanging cycle for the next few months or your simply experience all of these options. Your marks are moving up and down quicker than a 5-year old boy jumping on a trampoline, and you’re getting just as dizzy as him each time you get back your test results.
You keep comparing yourself to your peers. So, you’re not the top student of your class anymore, which makes sense, since your classes no longer consist of 20-30 people – instead, they consist of 1000-1500 students. You’re constantly comparing yourself to the rest of your peers. There’re thousands of other highly successful and distinguished students in your classes, and inevitably, there’re bound to be 1 or 2 people who are academically stronger than you. If that is not the case, you must a perfect genius who does not belong in any educational institution. If that is not the case, then consider yourself lucky because you still have numerous opportunities for self-improvement throughout all your trials in overcoming these hardships. Just think of yourself as not having reached your maximum potential yet. But don’t fret, because you’re on your way to getting there.
Are you proud of yourself? That won’t last long. So the class average for the midterm was 65 and you managed to get a solid 75, so you’re feeling proud about your ability to score higher than most of the other students…and then the professor announces that 10 students received a perfect score and another good amount of students received grades within the 80s range and you manage to slump back in your initial depressed mood and feeling of failure.
Hard working vs. lazy students, equal result. Upon reviewing your test or assignment you notice that you’re friend and yourself have done equally bad. However, the difference between you two is that your friend didn’t put in any effort, whereas you on the other hand worked extremely hard and even prioritized this course over your other assignment deadlines. Now you feel like there is no point in studying, either way you are trapped in your current grade average.
You still haven’t developed professional relationships with your professors. Most of your friends visit your professors’ office hours and email them on a weekly or even daily basis. They are certain that they can count on these professors’ help once they’re in need of reference and recommendation letters. Then there is you, who can’t even find the time to finish the readings in time for the test, let alone visit professors during their office hours and trying to build a relationship with them.
Let’s face it, you and I have the same experiences. You’ve probably been screaming “YASSS GURRL” at the top of your lungs for most if not all of these points. If you’re not screaming, you’re still in shock that there’s another U of T collegiate who shares similar experiences with you. Now take 30 seconds to pat yourself on the back and laugh all the stress off because you’ve just bonded with thousands of other U of T readers over these mutual feelings.
Stay tuned for the next article, where I discuss the average student’s refusal to maintaing good personal hygiene and peer friendships!
References
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