Usually, finals period brings late nights and early mornings charged with energy drinks and espresso shots, frantic Quizlet creations and cram-sessions in the common room, sporadic crying spells in Bass Library interspersed with midnight hysterics on the floor of your dormitory with your best friends in the entire world. It’s a hard time, but a good time— we are all in the final push together and the signs of our collective efforts, struggles, and joys are ever-present and easy to spot in the blink of an eye. It’s different now.
Over a month ago, I wrote an article titled “Managing All of This: Online Classes, Leaving Yale, Staying Sane.” The article was filled with words of positivity and encouragement, urging my fellow students to stay active, try the thing they’ve always wanted to try, learn something new, and accept the place where they are now. I don’t retract these sentiments, but I wish to qualify them: at the beginning of the strangest finals period (and time, in general) of our entire lives, it is critical to note that productivity is no longer our primary goal.
In the past few days, I’ve received and exchanged countless texts with friends and peers that read something like “I just can’t bring myself to do work.” “I don’t know why, but I can’t focus.” “I can’t get through my readings.” “I’m trying to start my final paper right now, but I just can’t.” “This is so hard.” The university’s adoption of Universal Pass/Fail was a welcome occasion for many students, but the lifted burden of grades has done little to assuage the deeply ingrained feeling that we, as Yale students, must be productive 24/7 and do our absolute best in order to prove something. But to prove what? That we are not lazy snowflakes? That we are, in fact, smart? That we deserve to be Yale students?
Today, one of my professors told the class in an apparent compliment that we have, in our successful completion of the course, subverted a public opinion that Yale students want to get off easy in our academic work (ostensibly in regards to the adoption of Universal Pass/Fail). This shocked me. If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that Yale students care so much. We care SO much— not only about our academic work, but about each other, our families, our livelihoods, the livelihoods of our friends and neighbors, public health, flattening the curve, doing what we can to help in this insane time.
If you slip and don’t write the best final paper of your life, it does not mean you are not productive. It does not mean you do not care about your academics. It does not mean you don’t deserve to be a Yale student. And it certainly does not mean you are a lazy snowflake. It means you are a human being. We all handle this upheaval in different ways, and there is no wrong way to adapt during a global pandemic.
So, I beg you, if you begin to berate yourself for not feeling the most productive at a time like this— be kind to yourself. You are smart, important, and caring. Be proud of yourself for getting this far. I am proud of you, we are proud of you.