The ever-increasing academic pressure, where good is never great and great is never enough, leaves me feeling out of control. For me, academia is a balancing act. It is a struggle to stay upright when the very ground beneath me is unkind to stability, slippery with exams, assignments, and endless mountains of reading. It is an ice-cold atmosphere, where I offer up my work, my countless hours of effort, to be reduced to a mere number that designates its worth. I am on thin ice, and at any moment I could fall. And so, after a long week of being hunched over textbooks, highlighter in hand, and furiously clawing at computer keys to match the professor’s pace, never quite outrunning the deadlines, there is nothing that I want more than the promise of Friday night. In college, Friday nights are notorious for fun. For low lights and loud music, or pizza and a movie. For me, Fridays are for figure skating—or at least attempting to.Â
Most Fridays you will find me at a local Buffalo ice rink lacing up my skates alongside my best friends. It has become our tradition, a way of de-stressing. We are eager for the rink to open and for the blades of our skates to glide across the ice once more. We crave that floating feeling of freeness that each step brings, the one which draws us out of the cloudiness of our minds and separates us from the demands of school—if only for that two hour period. Just as the Zamboni resets the ice, smoothing out the damage, skating has a way of resetting us. But ice skating is not only a relaxing mode of escape from school. Much to the contrary, I have realized that skating is not unlike academia at all. In fact, the resemblance is strikingly similar, stemming from their shared focus on controlling the uncontrollable.
Academia is a balancing act, a fight against the gravity, the ever present weight, of academic pressures to constantly be the best. I pour my effort, time, and perspective—my very self—into assignments, and submit them for a grade with the hope that my process shines through to the professor. Time and time again I have found myself at the mercy of my professor’s red pen, wondering if what I produced, if what I deemed an acceptable representation of my knowledge and effort worthy of submission measures up to the professor’s standard of good; I can only hope that my own definition of good matches theirs. One stroke of their red pen and I will slip.Â
It is easy, too easy, to slip. This is especially true in a college setting where grades come down to a sparse handful of assignments or exams. The stakes are high and the ground is slippery. One bad exam or quiz and your grade tanks. One simple mistake and you catch an edge, lose your balance, and spin out of control.Â
What then are students to do? We reach out for the railing, for some semblance of support to grab onto and stabilize us through that feeling of falling. But when we are away from home, in a far away place where our own bed is not really ours, that support can feel foreign, even absent. Initially, students must navigate the cold, unfeeling, and unfamiliar college life alone. The independence that college thrusts upon students brings a sort of coldness, a nuanced experience where it is up to the student to create a structure of support for themselves. Students must find friends, find resources, and figure out how to live in an entirely new setting. Then, just when you think you have got yourself back in control you realize you are still stuck out on that same ice, with the infamous red pen promising its next strike to set you spinning once again.Â
As an emerging figure skater, I despise the shaky feeling of uncertainty, the weakness in my knees when I attempt to execute a simple trick. The slipperiness of the ice is something beyond my control, something so uncertain that the only thing I can count on is the unpredictability of its attempts to offset my balance. So, just like in college, I control what I can. I bend my knees to adapt and absorb the strikes of the red pen. I dig in a little deeper with my edges to claw back power with the sureness and confidence in the knowledge I have equipped myself with. I try harder, study longer, and seek out stability where I can. The support system available to me at home might not exactly be within reach, but I build a new one by surrounding myself with friends, good ones, who I can count on and connect with as we navigate college together.Â
I have learned that my experience is not unique, that the slipperiness is felt by all college students from the second we stepped foot on the rink of higher education. There are life lines cast out by various resources which are sympathetic to the struggles and stress of students, acknowledging the commonality of uncertainty in academia. Colleges and universities offer an assortment of services, from tutors, to advisors, to mental health resources to help students. Personally, I use my professor’s office hours as an invaluable structure of support to seek clarification, explanation, and a familiarity of expectation in order to disarm the intimidating quality of exams and assignments. In doing so, I force certainty onto the uncertainty of academia and suddenly the red pen is not so scary.Â
Perhaps the reason that I find skating to be a source of joy and restoration is because of the confidence it gives me in my own ability to navigate the unpredictability of the ice, something that I strive for academically. I never quite know which way the slipperiness will send me, but I do my best to control it. With thorough preparation of knowledge and maximum effort applied, I give myself an edge. I balance out the weight of academic pressures with the things I can control, and skate on as best as I can through the pressure of college, a bit more steady than before.