For many of us, myself included, this semester has been probably one of the most stressful times of our lives.
For incoming freshmen, the coursework is often much more rigorous than they initially expected.
For sophomores and juniors, doing well enough to simply stay in school can sometimes be a day-to-day odyssey.
For seniors, the need to keep their grades up in their last year tempers the excitement about graduation.
For graduate students, balancing the often obscene course load with research, teaching, work, families and whatever sliver of a social life they may still manage to have can feel too overwhelming to bear.
We can add world events that the media forces us to keep in mind every day to all of this, and it becomes no wonder that life can be a struggle.
I have literally never experienced a more stressful time in my almost 24 years. In the course of four months, which have flown by at an alarmingly rapid pace, I have driven myself to near insanity managing my coursework, my assistantship and my relationships.
Before this semester began, the last thing I expected — or desired — was to find romance, and yet that is what happened only a week or two before the first day of school.
Then, in what seemed like almost the same short amount of time, that relationship crashed and burned a few weeks ago. In short, this hasn’t been an easy few months.
Luckily, most of you probably haven’t felt as overwhelmed as others. This semester was probably a breeze for many of you.
If that’s the case, cherish it! It’s good to start an academic year on a positive note.
But no matter how your semester has gone or how you expect the next one to go, it’s important to remember that love will always be on your side.
I’m not referring simply to romantic love — as you might imagine, I’m telling romantic love to go eff itself for a little while.
What I am referring to is the need to see beauty in everyday life and in people no matter how you’re feeling or what you’re going through.
Of course, this is frequently easier said than done. Personally, I’ve been having trouble seeing this beauty on a day-to-day basis for a while now.
But I always remember it’s there. And I make a point to force myself to recognize it, no matter how blurry it seems to be.
Obviously, I’m extremely fascinated by politics.
I think we, as citizens of a nation, have a responsibility to be informed and participate in the functions that make our society operate. Of course — and thank goodness — there’s more to our society than government, economics and politics.
However, no matter how much we may try to distance ourselves from these institutions, they are omnipresent aspects of our lives that we should recognize and engage with as much as we can.
Because of the importance of these institutions, we should try as citizens to push them in directions that emphasize love.
I know this sounds like a lofty, idealistic and abstract notion. But I believe the politics I and many others stand for are those that emphasize love toward others. It’s why we push for peace and equality.
In a nutshell, we need to ensure our society is built on love.
In a world with so much stress, grief, hatred, anger, war, confusion and loss, this idea clearly can become a dead letter. It becomes lost in abstraction and generalization.
But after a year and semester such as this, I hope many of you agree with me that it’s never been more important to hold firm on that principle.
Moisés Reyes is a journalism grad student at UF. His column appears on Fridays. You can contact him via opinions@alligator.org.
