Four months ago, I was in the spring semester of my senior year. Prom, senior sunrise, graduation, and not a care in the world. Fast forward to my first semester of college, and I am struggling to keep up with my newfound life.
The Normalized Hectic Life
It is not just the academics that are keeping us busy – although they do play a major part – but also our social lives, extracurricular activities, and finding time for ourselves and hobbies. Coming to college I knew that my workload would increase, and it would be up to me to balance it, but I did not realize it would be so difficult. College has a way of making life feel like it’s moving a hundred miles per hour, and somewhere between the assignments, social plans, and endless to-do lists, we start to wonder if we’re doing enough.
Everyone wants to be the girl who has her life together: the girl who gets good grades, has an abundance of friends, is always rocking an amazing outfit, and somehow keeps a smile on her face is the end goal for a lot of girls. However, it is easy to fall short of this high standard when the flow of assignments seems never ending. It would be easier to let the workload take over our lives, but what if being busy isn’t the problem? What if we’ve simply forgotten how to enjoy it?
We think about our upcoming assignments when we are with our friends, we stress over the fact that we have no good outfits at dinner, we wonder what we will miss out on if we skip plans to stay in and do homework, and we rush through the positive moments to get to the next task on our to do lists.
Learning to Love the Little Moments
Unfortunately, sometimes the heavy workload is unavoidable; however, all we can do is embrace it. The solution is to romanticize your everyday tasks. Put on your favorite music while you fold a mountainous pile of laundry, put on your most stylish outfit to give the presentation you’ve been dreading, and treat yourself to a delicious latte while you work through your fifty pages of reading. The list goes on, but the point is to find joy in the mundane, small moments in life.
Of course, not every part of a busy life is enjoyable. There are assignments we’d rather not write, shifts we’d rather not work, and responsibilities that feel more exhausting than fulfilling. Finding pleasure in busyness doesn’t mean pretending every obligation is exciting or forcing yourself to feel grateful when you’re overwhelmed.
Instead, the goal is to recognize the purpose behind our busy days, and remind ourselves of our goals.
Taking hard classes is an opportunity to learn exciting new things, studying for an exam will pay off with a good grade, participating in clubs allows us to make time for our hobbies and passions, and hanging out with friends reminds us how important it is to surround ourselves with genuine people. The point is that while a busy day may feel like it took years off of your life, it is truly a representation of your hardwork, dedication, and love for life.