As the first wave of exams arrives just in time to slug every UF student’s grades, time and sleep habits, now seems as good a time as any to mention it may be time to slow down.
It’s not difficult to spot a university exam season as it is happening. Although my Introduction to Statistics 1 class taught me correlation does not equate to causation, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the lack of empty tables in UF libraries might have to do with how many exams students have found themselves bombarded with this week.
And as you, reader, scorn the very existence of your professors as you anxiously avoid studying by reading this paper, crumpling it underneath your clammy, nervous hands, I recommend taking a moment to stop worrying how you might fail in the coming week or how you might have failed in the past week.
Mainly because you will. Fortunately, this is inevitable.
And as your Wi-Fi connection in Marston Science Library or Library West slows to a pace unsuitable for sloths, I’d like you to consider how normal this is, or how you’re not quite alone in what a classmate described to me as feeling “drawn and quartered by life at the moment.”
I don’t mean to imply every individual is dealing with the same degree of difficulty through his or her college days; the interior life of another person is unfathomable, and I estimate – unscientifically, of course – nearly a third of our lives’ mistakes comes from assuming otherwise.
Nevertheless, it’s important to note that, when we each make a beeline to our preferred study space, we aren’t entirely alone.
So, why am I utterly convinced in your capacity, dear reader, to fail? Because I think you have before and you’re still here.
As you mature and your failures seem to magnify and become less surmountable, haven’t you grown as well?
What I meant before about the inevitability of you failing was not about a particular test or paper coming up but the possibility of failure in some point in the future.
One of my favorite professors, who is now an associate dean in UF’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and from whom I shamelessly robbed my column’s thesis, once said, “You may fail at a test, a class, a job; a relationship. But you cannot let that deter you in life, because one of these things will happen no matter what.”
What I believe she was getting at was the fact that success requires grappling with a certain level of uncertainty and a continuous goal to improve. And improve, and improve and so forth.
In the meanwhile, I’ll leave you with a few temporary personal tips. First, a fact that cannot ever be stressed enough: Sleep has an extraordinary impact on your emotional and mental health. What causes us to lose sleep in rough patches is something science has not adequately figured out.
But what science has established is how a lack of sleep precipitates and exacerbates particularly rough moments. Seriously, try to get what you can.
Second, as a poetry professor once pointed out to me, “When I think I’m going to sit down and do work for six hours and get everything done, it never happens. It’s better to do a little at a time. And you’d also be surprised at what you can get accomplished in what you consider waste time: the time you spend walking around campus, waiting for your friends to get ready to go out, etc.”
Third and finally, make time to check up on your friends and family. They’re your sanity, and also, the temporary — like the doom and gloom of a GPA dropping at terminal velocity — should never be able to wedge itself between what you most need.
Neel Bapatla is a UF English sophomore. His column appears on Fridays.
