Follow Catherine as she documents her first year at UChicago!
If you have gotten through the past 8 weeks unscathed, let me take a moment to congratulate you. You rock, and you are a cut above the rest. (Or at least a cut above me.) I’m jealous, and I want to know your secret. As for me, I’d say I was going strong until about 6th week. My classes were still in their mid-quarter lull and my friendships were still going strong. But somewhere between two weeks ago and now I’ve undergone a transformation: I’m sleep deprived, I don’t hang out in my house lounge, and I’m stressed. Fun is nothing more than an idea to me rather than an active part of my everyday life.
I don’t think that this winter quarter has been quite as bad as upperclassmen have purposed it to be, but that could just be because I don’t have the energy to remember everything that has gone wrong throughout it. I’d rather block it out and try to make tomorrow better than dwell on the fact that what started out as a quarter of hope and new experiences has turned into fight to the death for a balance between school, sleep, and social interactions.
This quarter makes me wonder if this is just the norm here at UChicago. Can I really attribute my misfortune to winter when the weather has been pleasant? Or do I have to get used to this constant stress and tell myself to recuperate sometime in the future? Something tells me that the answer to the second question is a “yes, I do have to get used to this.” I’ll get through this, I keep telling myself. I need to take this one day at a time. Everything will get done, and this stress is just part of the experience. It is getting me ready for the stress of life in the real world. And although I look towards the future as this golden time when I will be in complete control of my surroundings and have endless choices as to how to spend my time, it’s simply not true. Real life will be just as hard, just as stressful, and similarly rewarding.
With only two weeks left in the quarter, it makes sense to just stuff your head in your notes and study until finals week. Normally, I would advise against this. I would tell you to sleep, to go have fun with your friends, to keep yourself healthy, and to know that everything will work out. That’s not the case this time. If you do that, you only have yourself to blame when you don’t do as well as you wanted to on your finals, and have to spend all of Spring Break telling yourself that “next quarter will be better.” It’s for fear of having to tell myself this that I will change the advice I normally give to myself, and instead say that friends can wait and sleep can be reduced. Grades are about to take precedent in my life and in the end, I will hopefully be happy with myself. If I keep this up, next quarter might actually be better. I’ll be able to block out Winter Quarter with a clear conscience and move on from there.