“Don’t get too caught up in the world of quadratic formulas and lengthy essays so much that you drift away from those who have been with you every turn and down every winding road”
By Tahreem Shah
Balancing multiple things at once can become quite difficult, most times it takes every ounce of my willpower to not rip my hair out in utter frustration. To top things off, COVID -19 has decided to grace us with its presence and stay here despite our constant pleas for it to go away. It's become extremely difficult to balance between schoolwork, social life (not that COVID-19 has left us with any) and home life. So all of us need to channel our inner Libras and balance it out somehow.
During COVID, our sleep schedules have ceased to exist, it's like they were never there in the first place. It is becoming increasingly difficult to stay awake during classes after spending the whole night reading completely irrelevant books and then not getting a second of shut-eye until you figured out what happened to your favourite character. In this case, there is only one thing I've learned, that there is no such thing as one more chapter, “go big or go home”. Either you read the full 970 pages or none at all. What you do now impacts your tomorrow, anything and everything you do has an impact, whether it's reading the whole night or spending the whole day slacking off under the covers instead of going to classes. In the end, everything you do will come back to you in one way or the other. So get your books out, set up your mic and camera and fix your future because only you have the power to do it. Half the time we are all sleep-deprived and it becomes increasingly difficult to manage it all and keep up with the storm, understand that you need to get up and get out of your covers and do what you need to do. As overwhelming as it sounds, your entire future depends on these four years and the work you do during them - so pace yourself and face the music.
Aside from our sleep schedules, we have trouble balancing our home lives with school, along with the sleep deprivation and the stress from classes it's hard to keep up with everything that goes on at home and spend time with those who really matter. This new way of learning - having to stay on technology for many hours a day, it's exhausting. Obviously, we are used to doing more hands-on and not having to constantly rub our tired eyes at school, it's tiring that's understandable. This has changed our whole routine, everything is different but that must not cause us to forget what matters most, our families and friends and those who we cherish in life. In life we will attain everything with some work, if we work hard enough we eventually get what we want but the one thing that we don't need to look for is family and love, we have it no matter what, and we shouldn't forget that. Sometimes the music gets too deafening and it becomes too much to endure but that's when the ones we hold most dear make an appearance and hold us through countless storms. Don't get too caught up in the world of quadratic formulas and lengthy essays so much that you drift away from those who have been with you every turn and down every winding road.
And above all, your mental health. Your mental health matters more than anything else, and it is your emotions and needs that decide what is best for you. The world is coming at you so fast that it's a massive blur of blades of grass and fading moonlight, that we don't have a chance to stop and smell the roses. While you should understand the importance of your education and cherish what matters under no circumstances does that mean that you are obligated to let anything pass without so much as a nod. Being mentally okay is just as important as being successful and cherishing those you love because with a broken and unhealed mindset and soul, everything in the world appears broken. We live in a society where everyone resides behind masks of false happiness and motivation, and this is not okay. You are a valued person. You matter. Your opinions and your emotions matter. If you can't seem to find it in you to finish that essay that sits uncompleted on your desk and looks at you mockingly, by all means, take the time off, teachers understand, family understands. If you can't find it in yourself to go with the long worksheet of trigonometry and would much rather climb into bed and stay there until the birds sing, then stay there, because, for everything else to work, your mind needs time to heal.
Nothing can be accomplished whilst your thoughts lay in fragments waiting
to be picked up. Nothing matters more than you and the fact that you are okay. Having bad days can become a regular occurrence it's understandable, Don't let that get swept under the rug. Your mental health is just as important as your application to law school. In order to be successful, you first need to be happy, let no one change that.
It's understandable that in times like these you are stressed. We've all been there, some of us live there (me) but you just need to keep your head up and let life go its way and don't let it get you down. In times like these, it's hard to balance everything but you just need to pace yourself and realize the importance of all that is around, yourself included.
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