Picture this: It's 7:39 a.m. The sun is out, creeping through the shades drawn closed from last night. Your roommate snores lightly on the bunk across from yours. All is at peace. Until, at 7:40 a.m., the alarm you've put on snooze three times that morning starts blaring. You jolt out from under the covers, fumbling for the button to shut that thing up. In your panic, you knock the phone off the bed, and it continues to scream at you as it clatters to the ground. Awesome. You scramble down the ladder, still wearing the clothes you had on yesterday because you were too tired last night to change out of them.
You sweep your unwashed hair out of your face and finally shut off the alarm as your roommate sighs and turns over under her blanket, exasperated and all too used to these rude wake-up calls. At this moment, you have to make some quick decisions. It takes about eleven minutes to walk (okay, jog) to your 8 a.m. class that is inevitably having a quiz this morning, meaning you have about nine to fix yourself into something resembling a presentable human being.
You pull some clothes out of the hamper (you have two weeks worth of laundry waiting to be washed), brush your teeth using water from a plastic bottle that's been on your desk since August (at this point, having a sink, or fresh water for that matter, is the least of your worries), and swipe on some fresh mascara over yesterday's coat. At 7:59 a.m., you run panting into the classroom, right on time as usual. As you sit down, the very last alarm you put on snooze goes off in your bag (and of course, it's the default, the most obnoxious tone. You have GOT to remember to change that. Meh, you'll do it tonight.)
This, my friends, is the narrative of a girl who consistently got less than five hours of sleep a night for the entire first semester of freshman year. What was I doing up that late, you may ask? Literally anything else than what I should have been doing. Coming into college, I had some serious FOMO. I was deeply afraid that I was going to miss something fun or spontaneous that my friends were doing. Late-night Target runs? I had to be there. Midnight Snellebrations?
No way was I missing those. More than that, I was scared that if I let my new friends hang out without me, the relationships I had with them would to dissolve before I'd even had the chance to solidify them. Even if I had work to do, or a quiz early in the morning, I believed that college was about spontaneity and making as many memories as possible. These are the moments you'll treasure forever, I told myself.
Um, hey, it's hard to treasure memories when you're half dead, exhausted, and unshowered while making them.
Usually, the way my days ended up panning out looked a little something like this:
7:40 a.m. - I wake up in a panic, barely make it to class, and spend the morning stressed about everything I have to do that I put off until today.
9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. - I need to work, so I gather up some friends and head to a study room, but I'm too sleep-deprived and distracted by my "study" group to actually accomplish anything. Instead, even though I'm exhausted, I spend the day running around campus wrapped up in everyone else's activities. I guess I'll just work later.
9:00 p.m. - 3:00 a.m. - Finally, through sheer will power (and fear of failing out of school) I pull myself together, head to my friend's dorm, and get the work done that I absolutely must turn in tomorrow. Of course, it takes a little longer than expected - it's hard to study and watch a movie AND talk about weekend plans all at once.
4:00 a.m. - After a quick trip to Snelling with the friends that are as poor at managing their time as I am, I crawl into bed, face unwashed, still in today's clothes, dreading the inevitable alarm coming for me in about three hours.
To everybody who finds themselves in this same, never-ending cycle - it doesn't have to be like this!
Here's what I discovered through many sleepless nights and many subsequent mornings of self-hatred: there is a fine line between living hard without reprieve and making sure to take time to rest so that you can actually live life to the fullest. Throughout my entire first semester of college, I was so focused on making and keeping friends and having the standard "college experience" that I spent every bit of energy I had trying please other people: I wanted to run, but my friend wanted to eat. Well...he shouldn't have to eat alone. I needed to study, but someone else wanted to walk around downtown. I didn't want her to stop inviting me places, so I went anyway. I desperately needed sleep, but some people I knew were having a dorm party. If I don't get out, I'll never meet anyone! Besides, this is what college is supposed to look like, right?
False. College, like any other stage of life, should most definitely not require giving so much of your time to others that you have none left for yourself. When I realized this and started taking myself and my sleep schedule more seriously, my life improved immensely. Who knew that sleep would give me the energy to complete my homework on time? Eat better? Exercise consistently? Taking time away from others to rest, a simple act of self-care, gave me the energy I needed to actually enjoy the time I spent with them. And guess what? Even after sleep and homework and working out and eating right and completing all the bare necessities of life that I neglected for so long, I still had time to do all the fun, spontaneous things I was scared of missing out on, and I enjoyed them even more than before because I wasn't trying to run a hundred miles an hour on empty.
Take care of yourself first, and all the rest will follow. As my mother would say, "you have no business in anything going on once the sun goes down." I'm just kidding, nightlife is obviously really fun, especially in Athens. The point I'm trying to make is this: self-care is NOT for the weak. It's for those who want to feel more than half-alive throughout the day. It's for those who don't want to hate themselves, their school, and the world when their alarm goes off in the morning. It's for those who don't want to miss the same 8 a.m. class consistently for three weeks in a row. Take care of yourself. Real friends will still be ready to hang out when you get back from studying for that test you have tomorrow. Real relationships won't fall apart overnight. Just go to bed. You'll be glad you did.
