Heavy Shoulders | A Study Break
I just got a wave of being extremely and disturbingly upset. I brushed it off, as it tried to creep up on me but it's settling in my shoulders and I had to push away the book I was trying to study for a moment. I feel genuinely unwell. So naturally, I take to my keyboard.
I was studying for my strategy course, desperately trying to catch up on the seemingly endless chapter of the learning school. Ironically, not feeling like I was learning a lot. Maybe it was a mistake to try and go back and pick up readings from last week rather than focus on the ones for tomorrow (in the same course) but we're discussing a case tomorrow based on last week's readings and I wanted to be prepared.
Perhaps, I shouldn't try to study after a two hour lecture and three hours of group work on a presentation. I've been at my university for over seven hours now and I think this unsettled feeling trying to drown me is reminding me of my limits. I hate my limits sometimes. At the moment, it seems like I'm constantly battling with them and it's just making things even more exhausting. I try to make schedules and stick to them but I pile too much on - not voluntarily but because it is necessary for me to keep up with all my responsibilities.
I talk a lot about balancing being busy lately and I just got the feeling that I'm not even close to figuring it out myself. You would think that all these reflective and introspective blog posts do a good job at making me feel in control but the relief is temporary. The moment I step away from the keys, the calmness that this space grants me start to melt away and gradually I'll be back where I started.
There's just so much out in the world and I want to be involved with a lot of it. So I say yes to social gatherings on top of my education and work responsibilities, not to mention having enough time to properly take care of my horse, which is something I still love dearly. I sign up for things that sound interesting without thinking about the mental drain they might have on me, no matter how wonderful they are for my network or whatever. I rarely regret doing the things in the moment and I almost always learn something but sometimes I wonder if the fatigue that follows is worth it.
It is not the first time I have wished that I'd be able to freeze time to catch up on everything for a little while or even just take a nap and not have the day run away from me. Feeling things slip through your fingers, smoothly gliding out of your grip while you watch helplessly, cannot be recommended. It's terrifying and now my shoulders ache.
My eyes burn slightly too. I want to be a good student and catch up on my readings but right now my eyes kept glassing over the words and not taking them in at all. It's frustrating when you can't will your brain to work like you want it too.
I want to go home and nap or just sleep until tomorrow morning. But I have a horse to visit, pages to read and a live show to catch at 10 PM. I want to do all of those things and I wanted to finish more readings today than this. Maybe my project partner and I wasted time chatting and getting to know each other better because we're still not quite close and I can't bring myself to see that bonding time as wasteful, even if it was slightly impractical for the productivity. But I always forget how talking to people tires me out, it's only 3 PM and I feel like it's nearly midnight.
The hazy light from the grey clouds visible through the skylight might not be helping either. It's grey and somewhat cosy and it makes me want to curl up in my hoodie and just rest my eyes for a bit. I had 75 pages to read in my strategy book, 15 pages in the compendium and a 15 page case - all preferably for tomorrow and I have managed like ten or fifteen pages in the book in the span of an hour. That's honestly a pathetic attempt but it's an obvious side effect of the fatigue. And I was being naive in thinking I could read all that, especially after group work ran long.
My old mentor from my bachelor education popped up in a video on my Facebook feed recently. She talked about the guilty consciousness that most students carry around. We don't manage to read everything for all the courses due to work or social obligations and apparently that's supposed to be the way of life for us. I get where she's coming from and I know she's trying to be positive in a sense of "people don't read everything and are good students anyway" but it fell a little flat within me.
We are supposed to be able to make it through all the readings for our courses without feeling like we're coming apart at the seams.
If that is not the case then something is off, either the work load from the course, the work ethic of the students, poor choice of material from the lecturers, or just a blatant disregard of the human factor.
Our educational system seem to be under continuous stress and pressure to finish strictly on time and not to diverge from the set path, which might very well make students feel like machines in a factory. In one end, out the other in three or five years, complete replicas of each other.
The reality is that students have to work besides their studies and with the study being a full-time job already, our workload naturally becomes heavy. At the same time, it's the point in our lives where we are the least tied down by responsibilities and those years slip by faster than one might realise. We should of course be diligent students but we should also be allowed to be young.
Some days, it feels like I'm the only one who is itching closer and closer to my breaking point. You feel alone in hopelessness and your mind tricks you into believe that everyone around you are doing just fine and that you're just being weak for not managing in the same way. A little secret? None of us feel on top of our shit most of the time. We smile and fake it and do well in some areas while we face-plant in others. It's all about the perspective.
I know for a fact that many of my fellow students see me as being an organised, diligent and actively participating student. On the surface that might be true but I have lazy moments, moments of doubt where I push the readings and responsibilities aside and I have to "wing it" in class.
I hate winging it. It goes against my nature but I am getting better and better at it with practice. I would love to have the time to read all the texts in a calmly manner but despite how important my education is to me, my life is also outside of my study.
My study is a very big part of my life, perhaps the biggest one at the moment, but it is not everything. I love what I study for most parts. I find a fair bit of the information fascinating and exciting. I enjoy learning and bouncing ideas off of peers and lecturers. I like the accomplished feeling after getting positive feedback on a project of my hard work. I love a lot of things about being a student but I do not love this pressure to make it all.
Part of the pressure is from outside forces and other parts are from internal ones. If I cared less, I wouldn't be so upset when I didn't manage to finish a reading on time. Would it be an easier existence? Yes, I would expect it to be. However, these pressures also encourages me to go the extra mile when I'm tired and for that I am thankful.
I suppose I should just make sure I don't push it from one mile to, say, five miles. That would be too far a stretch to go, even if it can seem tempting to push on even further when you're already outdoing what you thought yourself capable of. However, pushing it too far will only lead to fainting somewhere before the moved finish line and then it'll take twice as long to find your footing afterwards and set you back even further.
The calmness from venting in form of writing is settling in me now. My shoulders are still heavy but this half an hour was not wasted. I will go finish that endless 60+ pages beast of a chapter and try to move on to the things for tomorrow's lecture.
A little post edit as I'm re-reading and editing this in my bed: I finished roughly twenty-five pages in an hour before finally heading home. *pats self on the back*
I was studying for my strategy course, desperately trying to catch up on the seemingly endless chapter of the learning school. Ironically, not feeling like I was learning a lot. Maybe it was a mistake to try and go back and pick up readings from last week rather than focus on the ones for tomorrow (in the same course) but we're discussing a case tomorrow based on last week's readings and I wanted to be prepared.
Perhaps, I shouldn't try to study after a two hour lecture and three hours of group work on a presentation. I've been at my university for over seven hours now and I think this unsettled feeling trying to drown me is reminding me of my limits. I hate my limits sometimes. At the moment, it seems like I'm constantly battling with them and it's just making things even more exhausting. I try to make schedules and stick to them but I pile too much on - not voluntarily but because it is necessary for me to keep up with all my responsibilities.
I talk a lot about balancing being busy lately and I just got the feeling that I'm not even close to figuring it out myself. You would think that all these reflective and introspective blog posts do a good job at making me feel in control but the relief is temporary. The moment I step away from the keys, the calmness that this space grants me start to melt away and gradually I'll be back where I started.
There's just so much out in the world and I want to be involved with a lot of it. So I say yes to social gatherings on top of my education and work responsibilities, not to mention having enough time to properly take care of my horse, which is something I still love dearly. I sign up for things that sound interesting without thinking about the mental drain they might have on me, no matter how wonderful they are for my network or whatever. I rarely regret doing the things in the moment and I almost always learn something but sometimes I wonder if the fatigue that follows is worth it.
It is not the first time I have wished that I'd be able to freeze time to catch up on everything for a little while or even just take a nap and not have the day run away from me. Feeling things slip through your fingers, smoothly gliding out of your grip while you watch helplessly, cannot be recommended. It's terrifying and now my shoulders ache.
My eyes burn slightly too. I want to be a good student and catch up on my readings but right now my eyes kept glassing over the words and not taking them in at all. It's frustrating when you can't will your brain to work like you want it too.
I want to go home and nap or just sleep until tomorrow morning. But I have a horse to visit, pages to read and a live show to catch at 10 PM. I want to do all of those things and I wanted to finish more readings today than this. Maybe my project partner and I wasted time chatting and getting to know each other better because we're still not quite close and I can't bring myself to see that bonding time as wasteful, even if it was slightly impractical for the productivity. But I always forget how talking to people tires me out, it's only 3 PM and I feel like it's nearly midnight.
The ominous lighting of my current study place
The hazy light from the grey clouds visible through the skylight might not be helping either. It's grey and somewhat cosy and it makes me want to curl up in my hoodie and just rest my eyes for a bit. I had 75 pages to read in my strategy book, 15 pages in the compendium and a 15 page case - all preferably for tomorrow and I have managed like ten or fifteen pages in the book in the span of an hour. That's honestly a pathetic attempt but it's an obvious side effect of the fatigue. And I was being naive in thinking I could read all that, especially after group work ran long.
My old mentor from my bachelor education popped up in a video on my Facebook feed recently. She talked about the guilty consciousness that most students carry around. We don't manage to read everything for all the courses due to work or social obligations and apparently that's supposed to be the way of life for us. I get where she's coming from and I know she's trying to be positive in a sense of "people don't read everything and are good students anyway" but it fell a little flat within me.
We are supposed to be able to make it through all the readings for our courses without feeling like we're coming apart at the seams.
By a Girl who Loves to Write aka Me
If that is not the case then something is off, either the work load from the course, the work ethic of the students, poor choice of material from the lecturers, or just a blatant disregard of the human factor.
Our educational system seem to be under continuous stress and pressure to finish strictly on time and not to diverge from the set path, which might very well make students feel like machines in a factory. In one end, out the other in three or five years, complete replicas of each other.
The reality is that students have to work besides their studies and with the study being a full-time job already, our workload naturally becomes heavy. At the same time, it's the point in our lives where we are the least tied down by responsibilities and those years slip by faster than one might realise. We should of course be diligent students but we should also be allowed to be young.
Some days, it feels like I'm the only one who is itching closer and closer to my breaking point. You feel alone in hopelessness and your mind tricks you into believe that everyone around you are doing just fine and that you're just being weak for not managing in the same way. A little secret? None of us feel on top of our shit most of the time. We smile and fake it and do well in some areas while we face-plant in others. It's all about the perspective.
I know for a fact that many of my fellow students see me as being an organised, diligent and actively participating student. On the surface that might be true but I have lazy moments, moments of doubt where I push the readings and responsibilities aside and I have to "wing it" in class.
I hate winging it. It goes against my nature but I am getting better and better at it with practice. I would love to have the time to read all the texts in a calmly manner but despite how important my education is to me, my life is also outside of my study.
My study is a very big part of my life, perhaps the biggest one at the moment, but it is not everything. I love what I study for most parts. I find a fair bit of the information fascinating and exciting. I enjoy learning and bouncing ideas off of peers and lecturers. I like the accomplished feeling after getting positive feedback on a project of my hard work. I love a lot of things about being a student but I do not love this pressure to make it all.
Part of the pressure is from outside forces and other parts are from internal ones. If I cared less, I wouldn't be so upset when I didn't manage to finish a reading on time. Would it be an easier existence? Yes, I would expect it to be. However, these pressures also encourages me to go the extra mile when I'm tired and for that I am thankful.
I suppose I should just make sure I don't push it from one mile to, say, five miles. That would be too far a stretch to go, even if it can seem tempting to push on even further when you're already outdoing what you thought yourself capable of. However, pushing it too far will only lead to fainting somewhere before the moved finish line and then it'll take twice as long to find your footing afterwards and set you back even further.
The calmness from venting in form of writing is settling in me now. My shoulders are still heavy but this half an hour was not wasted. I will go finish that endless 60+ pages beast of a chapter and try to move on to the things for tomorrow's lecture.
A little post edit as I'm re-reading and editing this in my bed: I finished roughly twenty-five pages in an hour before finally heading home. *pats self on the back*
Comments
Post a Comment