Life in college is full of toxic cultures: drinking, drugs and random hookups.
When not experienced in moderation, these cultures can be devastating to our lives. However, one culture afflicts us all, yet no one talks about it — the culture of being busy.
The plague of everyone being “soooooo super busy” is a silent killer disguised as an American status symbol.
Busy is the de facto response to the question of “How have you been lately?” for anyone I ask. I can’t blame them, though. If you don’t constantly fill your time with menial self-imposed tasks, you’re a slacker in society’s eyes.
We’re talking about the nation where the law doesn’t guarantee vacation time, and, according to the BBC, 40 percent of workers don’t use all their vacation days.
This statistic should make everyone uneasy, but millennials responded to the BBC survey by taking to social media and declaring Americans aren’t lazy and are hard working.
This response is crazy. After all, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. It’s an extreme example, but the toxicity of busy has been a theme in pop culture for years. Yet we wonder why one in 10 people in America suffer from depression. That number is almost triple for college students according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
Still, we treat being busy as a badge of honor and not the dementor feeding off happiness that it is.
I’m not naive to the fact some people are eternally busy because they need two jobs to support them through college while keeping a 4.0 GPA. But the strongest trend of this culture isn’t people talking about how busy their day is, they are just doing what needs to be done.
The people preaching about their busy lives are the ones in 12 clubs by their own design or those only busy by their standards.
Most of the time, people talk about being busy as an exercise in narcissism, whether they know it or not.
It feels good to tell people you are busy. It means you are important and what you do matters. Being busy is existential reassurance you’re not wasting your life.
This is where the trouble starts. Now, if you say you aren’t busy, then you feel like society thinks you’re unimportant. So, people make sure to fill their time with whatever they can find or talk about how busy they are, when they actually aren’t.
Our generation cannot survive this vicious cycle. Busy should be a confession, not a brag.
The goal in our lives shouldn’t be to tell our friends how much homework we have or about our student organization duties, but to find a work-life balance where we aren’t too busy to enjoy our loved ones and hobbies.
We should measure our lives not by the number of meetings we attend but the number of dinners with friends. Not by the volume of emails we reply to in a day but the volume of the music we blast in our apartments.
What I’m describing might sound like a utopian fantasy. I admit the trap of being busy is easy to fall into.
I found myself a victim of this culture, but I caught myself and decided to change.
Today, I’m the laziest ambitious person I know. I’m not ashamed to admit I’m not too busy to have a borderline embarrassing amount of hours spent on video games.
I have held a solid GPA while working jobs and internships during the school year. This isn’t bragging but proof you can still be successful while not being constantly busy. Honestly, I feel happier not being constantly busy. It gives me more time to appreciate what I have in life, and I don’t have to find self-worth in the amount of activities I take part in.
Older generations consider our generation the laziest and most privileged ever. We shouldn’t feel bad about this — we should embrace it.
Why should we model ourselves on generations with serial work-life balance and workplace happiness problems? Why should we sacrifice our happiness for the sake of keeping up appearance?
We can all work together to change this toxic culture, and maybe one day, the strange person in the room will be the one who works too much to not spend time on themselves, and not the other way around. And we’ll all be happier when this happens.
Jay Cranford is a 21-year-old finance senior from St. Simons Island, Georgia. You can reach him on Twitter @hjcranford.