Take a breath

This is to all of the students who are feeling overwhelmed by the deluge of papers, projects, and ensuing final exams, and who wish that this semester would just end so they can catch a breath of fresh air. In short, this is for everyone at Columbia right now.

It’s no mystery that at Columbia, stress is the status quo at virtually any time of the semester. But this is especially true in the final weeks of December. It’s during these weeks that everything is due—that the work from the extra classes, ambitiously added at the beginning of the semester, now feels like it will never be finished. Some, in panic mode, withdraw from spending time with friends to work, and others withdraw from work and distract themselves with friends, understandably reluctant to start on the 15-page paper that awaits.

To cope with the pressure, many of us can’t talk about anything but our busy schedules. While this may be an easy conversation-starter, it normalizes stress and treats us like partial people, as if the only important thing in our lives is our work. Wilfred Chan, in the first of two moving articles in yesterday’s issue of The Eye, beautifully expressed this fragility of undergraduate life: “Shared misery, not shared joy, is what validates us at Columbia.”

This is not to say that we should sugarcoat our college experience—we must, rather, be willing to truly listen to each other during these weeks, and not try to one-up each other with our workloads. Breaking to spend more than a passing moment with friends during finals can be a restorative and memorable experience.

Professors and TAs can also do wonders by being understanding during this time. Many who graciously grant extensions, or in other ways show their care for their students, already are making a difference in their students’ lives. Practical changes, like not giving students both a final exam and a final paper in one class, would also go a long way to easing the burden on undergraduates during this time.

Sometimes the pressure to perform can make students sacrifice wellness and health of mind and body, and this, too, has become the norm. But staying up for multiple all-nighters should not be a normal part of the college experience. There is so much more to us, to you, than what we all produce.

In the end, the grades that result from this semester are not equal to what we accomplished and learned at Columbia. Even though we’ve all been told this at least once, it’s helpful to remember it when stress starts to set in. And thankfully, it will all be over soon.