This has undoubtedly been the most challenging and unapologetically stressful semester of my entire life.
Sure, overwhelming assignments, back-to-back exams and a concerning amount of lost sleep have characterized every single semester of my college experience. However, after this round of midterms, I feel like I might have finally reached a state of perpetual burnout.
And I know I’m not the only one who feels like they’re stretched out entirely too thin. I’ve lost count of how many friends and classmates have relayed the same desperate plea of “When will this semester end?”
This semester might be manageable if students were only expected to focus on their education. However, we’re expected to give every ounce of our energy to our classes while also balancing our social lives, potential jobs and mental wellness.
To be frank, every time I hear someone say, “mind over matter” or anything else implying that you just have to keep a positive mindset to succeed, I can’t help but roll my eyes.
If being relentlessly optimistic was so easy, don’t you think we’d all be little rays of sunshine by now?
The constant pressure placed on college students is pushing us to the absolute limit, and it’s honestly laughable that we’re encouraged to put on a happy face while barely maintaining sanity.
So here’s my proposal: instead of feeling bad about ourselves for not being super positive all the time, maybe we should actively begin embracing our pessimism and unhappiness.
It might sound ridiculous to start expecting the worst, but I think it’s equally as ridiculous to expect the best in every situation, pretending our stress isn’t eating us alive. I’m no philosopher, but it seems like openly accepting negativity can be healthier than feigning and forcing pure optimism.
These days, it’s getting harder and harder to pretend like I think everything is going my way. It feels horrible and infinitely more mentally straining to force positivity, and I think this could be a contributing factor to academic burnout in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong—being happy and feeling positive about your life is so important, and it’s something most of us are striving to feel. If this is something that comes easy to you, I truly envy you. However, I don’t think the rest of us should put ourselves down for occasionally expecting the worst.
Sometimes, you just have to be pessimistic, if only to later exceed your own expectations and break your negativity cycle.
There is one caveat to my embrace of pessimism, however—please don’t be insufferable. It’s okay to feel bad, but it’s not okay to force others to feel bad, too. We’re all trying to leave that middle school angst in the distant past.
No matter where you fall on the cynicism-to-idealism scale in life, I think the full range of emotions and sentiments, from ecstasy to despair, simply make us human. We shouldn’t feel pressured to push one feeling down in favor of another, especially when we already feel so pressured and stressed in every other area of our lives.
Emily Davison is a 20-year-old anthropology and English junior from Denham Springs.