Make room for passion

Back in the days when I was applying to college, both my imagination and the people around me represented college as a place where I could expand my interests and spend time doing the things I was passionate about. The reason college applications asked for my extracurricular activities, my mentors told me, was that they wanted to know what sort of exciting and interesting things I’d be spending my time doing at college. I imagined taking part in all kinds of clubs and internships, having a more fulfilling life because of these opportunities to pursue my passions.

To some extent, this dream has come true. I’ve been able to get my wish, for instance, to spend almost all of my time immersed in literature, and it’s been one of my favorite things about my life here. I’ve also expanded some of my interests through extracurriculars. But there’s also another side of college life that I didn’t anticipate before I got here. College can be a space to pursue your passions, but it can also consume your life in a way that prevents you from doing things you find fulfilling.

How does this even happen? This other side to college would have been unthinkable to my younger self. As an aspiring fiction writer, I grew up scribbling descriptions, stories, and character sketches, and I couldn’t imagine a life where I wasn’t doing so constantly. But after the initial few months of my first year, my life started to shift away from allowing me to write frequently. Most of my classes during my time here have been reading and writing intensive, and when I wasn’t doing work for them, I didn’t really want to do something else that required my brain to be active. Free time became break time, and the number of YouTube videos I watched exponentially increased as the amount of writing I did decreased. Everything that I loved about my classes—the level of difficulty, the engaging discussions, grades based on papers instead of tests—was also everything that prevented me from doing the thing I loved the most.

I don’t think I’m alone in this. There are plenty of my friends who have passions for photography, cooking, or theatre and just don’t have the time for developing photos, baking bread from scratch, or attending daily rehearsals. We may have majors that interest us, extracurriculars that we enjoy, and friends who we love spending time with—but still, something is missing. When I first recognized this in myself, I tried to justify my infrequent writing habits. After all, it wasn’t like I wasn’t doing any writing—I was writing for class and for Spec! But the fact remains that there’s something about fiction writing that fulfills me in a way other things don’t and is necessary for the health of my mind and my soul. And when I realized that, I couldn’t hide anymore: I needed to write more fiction.

College is often a place where we sacrifice our physical and mental health for the sake of our work and extracurriculars. But no matter how little we sleep or how poorly we eat, none of us actually thinks that we don’t need sleep to function or that a proper diet can be utterly lacking in vegetables. Why, then, do we treat the other kinds of health like they’re unimportant or dispensable? While I’m not suggesting we should never spend an evening catching up on Modern Family, I do think we need to take a closer look at the way we order our schedules. If we don’t make the time at least twice a month to do those important, soul-fulfilling things—whatever they are—maybe we’re doing something wrong.

Kathryn Brill is a Barnard College junior majoring in English. She is a member of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. We Should Talk runs alternate Mondays.