It was 3:30 p.m. on a Friday afternoon. Specifically, it was the Friday before Columbus Day weekend; the first big “holiday” that Boston University’s students — who had just made it out of their first ever college midterm season (or are bracing themselves for it in the weeks to come) — deem suitable for a visit home. Students book tickets for airplanes, Amtrak, the commuter rail, and more. They frantically pack, unsure of whether an entire duffel bag of clothes is enough for a three-day weekend (or maybe that’s just me). If they’re getting picked up, they charge their phones and prepare to shout directions lovingly at their parents, who, regardless of experience, verbal instructions, and the aid of Google Maps, still manage to get lost on Comm. Ave.
I started packing at 2 p.m., and like the quintessential college student in every TV show and movie, I packed my laundry so I could do it at home. A brief aside: my actions stemmed from efficiency alone. No part of me wanted to delegate the job to my mom, who’s 100 times better than me at doing laundry. It was all about efficiency, I promise.
When I had finished packing — which I did in my friends’ dorm (only two rooms away from mine, lucky me!) because I wanted to be in the presence of people also packing — I pulled out my planner from my heavy, overstuffed last season’s PINK backpack. I have a love/hate relationship with this planner, by the way. It’s absolutely adorable, with cute seasonal stickers (including Jack-O-Lanterns!) and nostalgia-inducing quizzes from the magazines of our past. At the same time, I lack consistency and I’ll go WEEKS without updating my planner, partly because I use Google Calendar anyways and partly because I’m a lazy perfectionist (what a contradiction). But this week’s theme was love, as I had just gotten back into the routine of writing in it everyday.
As I flipped it open to this week’s spread, the sight of all my to-do lists and plans made me incredibly happy. My tired and indifferent mood, which had been my default for at least two of my classes that day, instantly washed away and I was beaming. Just like that, I was on top of the world.
Credit: Pinterest
I had a mountainous to-do list for the weekend, including, but not limited to, doing hundreds of pages of reading (although Jane Eyre and The Grapes of Wrath are both interesting, if not a little long), studying for two midterms — one of which is MA124/Calculus II, a class I absolutely do not belong in, and working on mandatory problem sets and discussion thread posts.
I was also fully booked: train ride with my friend Morgan, drive to the University of Connecticut, get picked up by my best friend, grab dinner with her, and get dropped off at home (where I will have surprised my parents, as they didn’t know I was coming home at all!), sleep for 7 hours, work on my to-do list, have a girls’ day with my BFF (complete with shopping, nail appointments, and studying together at our local Starbucks) spend time with my family, study more, and finally, catch a Greyhound Bus back to Boston.
I’m usually a flexible person, but something about tight schedules makes me so happy.
Credit: Me and My Big Ideas
On the days where my classes don’t start until 2 p.m. and I have nothing else to do all day, I’m extremely susceptible to staying in bed and feeling down in the dumps. On those days, I’m the least productive too, staring at my agenda for hours and in what feels like five minutes later, it’s 10 p.m. and I have 10 chapters due the next day that I haven’t even started reading.
Maybe the excess of free time I have on those days lull me into a sense of extreme security, intense enough that I can’t help just putting off every single little thing. Psychological reasons aside, I just love being busy.
Credit: Chelle Marie Wellness
It’s easy to balk and panic at a full schedule with a seemingly endless to-do list, and I do just that at first, but it feels so good to be able to push past those initial mental blocks and actually cross items off your list. At night, as I prepare for bed, I love knowing that in the last 14 or so hours, I had studied for my classes, attended events and completed tasks for the clubs I’m in, found time to grab meals with my friends, and spent time for self-care, whether by watching an episode of The Resident or doing a face mask in my pjs.
I absolutely love being busy.
Want to keep up with HCBU? Make sure to like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, check out our Pinterest board, and read our latest Tweets!
Want to keep up with HCBU? Make sure to like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, check out our Pinterest board, and read our latest Tweets!