Here I am again yet again, confined to the walls of my suite and frantically emailing professors about how I won’t be able to make it to class. I’m sick! Somehow, I manage to go an entire Summer at home without coming down with the slightest illness, but the second I step on campus, it’s just one thing after another. While being sick might make me want to blame the whole world, let’s be honest, I do my fair share of things that contribute to the problem. The number one thing I need to get a handle on? Sleep.
I truly think that my lack of sleep at this point in the semester could be the unfortunate cause of the fevers, sore throats, and colds. It’s a common thing for college students to justify going to bed at all hours of the night due to school work and packed daytime schedules, and then use the weekends to go out at night, again not getting to bed until the early hours of the morning. I often fall victim to this bizarre schedule, and usually don’t notice until it’s too late. For the first week or maybe even two, this seems doable. Just sleep in late on the weekends and then you make up for it right? Not so much…
Eventually, you can’t outrun a lack of sleep (especially when you have 8:30’s every day like I do), and you can’t “make up” for a bad sleep schedule by sleeping away an entire day. You get exhausted, sick, and run down. Sometimes staying healthy means choosing sleep and wellbeing over schoolwork, and I think that’s a fair price to pay. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be doing your best, but maybe it means setting a certain time each night when you call it quits on the studying and head to bed because you value your own mental and physical health just a little bit more than the quiz you have tomorrow. Using my time wisely throughout the day so I can get to bed early is something I’m still working on, but it’s also something I know will make a difference in my health and how I feel. Budgeting your time and being realistic about your priorities is so important in making sure that you save time to do the really important thing: taking care of yourself!