I find myself these last few days at something of a loss. I am in a situation of being enrolled in classes, but having nothing to do. It’s not that I merely have some leeway before my next deadline, I actually have nothing to do because I am caught up. Unlike the only instances of free time in recent memory, this time it isn’t because I lack direction, or have been compelled to take time off because of health concerns. I am exactly more or less where I am supposed to be, and I have nothing to do. And I’m not sure how to handle it.
This is a good microcosm of a recurring theme of the past year, or at least the past six months. Feelings of being out of place or off balance have mixed in with an occasional dash of pride or accomplishment when it has been clear that I am the only one who knows the answer. I won’t say that college classes have been easy, because there have been challenging moments, and I’ve had to stretch myself to make sure I finish everything that needs to be turned in despite my disabilities. But for as much as I’ve spent the last several months waiting in anticipation for the other shoe to drop, for the sword to fall, and for the administrators and professors to turn out to be as bad as high school, or worse, things have gone better than I might have feared.
I’m hesitant to look a gift horse in the mouth here. But I strive to be above all self aware. And moreover, as I am formulating a new batch of resolution snow for the new year, it is only proper that I conduct an in depth reflection on what has worked, what hasn’t, and how to improve it. So, here goes.
Workload
The fact that I’m in this situation of being finished at the end of the semester, and reasonably confident that my grades will be good without knowing the final calculation, but at the same time have been mostly busy for the semester suggests that my workload is probably in the right ballpark. There were a few times when I was sick or busy, and it was a tossup whether I would make it to class or finish the homework, but I made it through. So this is probably roughly where the balance lies between coasting and jeopardizing my health.
I’m a little frustrated at this, because while the workload was about where I could handle it, intellectually there were times when I felt bored. I don’t know whether that’s a function of the classes being introductory level, or of my classmates being some combination of uninterested, unmotivated, shy, or stupid. But when I’m single-handedly answering a supermajority of questions asked by the professor to the room, because no one else raises their hand, and when called upon can’t give a correct answer even by reading from the book, something isn’t right. I can’t afford to overwork myself, but I would like to be challenged.
This is probably my hamartia; the fatal flaw in my tragic heroism. I have the intellectual capacity to require a high degree of challenge to satisfy me, but my physical handicaps prevent me from successfully executing the challenge to the satisfaction of myself or others. This far, I have been unable to find a balance. I can either be complacent, treating everything like and idle game and phoning it in, or I can seek things that interest me, creating more work for myself than I can handle.
But perhaps I’m overdramatizing. Perhaps too shall pass, and I shall find such a balance, and unleash my full potential. Perhaps it is a simple matter of allowing myself to gain more experience and wisdom.
Activities
I wouldn’t say that my first semester of college has been unstructured, because I have been unusually organized for me. I managed to get all my assignments turned in, after all, which I don’t know has ever happened for an entire semester in my life. So yeah, I’ve been organized. Or at least, organized enough. But in saying that, I realize that my “being organized” has come about, less like a calm, orderly, elegant rule of law, and more like an oppressive, hectic, martial law.
This isn’t really a surprise to me. Since I’ve been chronically ill, which has been a long time, work happens when I’m able, and rest happens when I’m unable, whenever those happen to fall. This sounds like a horrible system for the long run, and believe me it is, but, well… you try explaining to an angry teacher that your paper is going to be a day later, because you haven’t had an hour of free time in months, when they already don’t believe that you were actually sick all of last week, or that you would still be too sick to be allowed in school if you hadn’t been mixing steroids with over the counter fever suppressants.
And I’ve grown okay with that. If I’m excited to tackle a project, in pursuit of a topic I’m interested in, I’m okay making some sacrifices. I can live with martial law if I know and support what I’m fighting for. But I think I can do better than this. I think I can get to something a little less like the academic war footing I’ve been on, and a little more, well, human. I’d like to be able to have a better answer when I’m asked what I do in my free time than “I don’t have free time; or at least, it’s so infrequent that it doesn’t merit a designated activity.” Being a cyborg is fine if it keeps me alive, but I’d rather not be seen as robotic.
I don’t know whether I could really manage to make a splash in a proper club with a regular meeting schedule, as both my parents, and the assortment of professionals the university pays to advise me on how to keep my head, would like. Organized schedules seem to be the antithesis of my health situation, and there were a few weeks last semester where I think having an extracurricular activity to get to in addition would’ve pushed me over the edge, and set back my health enough that I wouldn’t have completed classwork, and we know how that song goes.
Still, I need to find something to do. Because while my workload and commitments are mostly calibrated to be doable on my bad days, which is undoubtedly as they ought, it leaves a lot of free time when I get things done on time. Not enough or so consistently that I can feel comfortable to add more commitments, but enough that I find myself in need of some activities beyond mere distraction. This could be as simple as deciding I’m going to keep up the LEGO City better, or committing to a world conquest campaign on one of my video games.
Social Life
Well, good thing all of the areas of my life are going well. Nothing else to report. Best be wrapping up this post and putting it in the queue.
My social life? What do you mean? That’s not even a real thing. What am I supposed to reflect about it? It’s not like there are any problems there. After all, you can’t have problems in an area of life that doesn’t exist, right? Let’s be real, no one really cares as long as I get good grades.
Fine. But just so you know, it’s your fault this post is going to run long.
Look, I’ve never been popular. I’ve never had many friends (or at least, many close friends that are in my age group and live in the same geographic area). Part of this is that I’m a constantly over analyzing introvert, but a lot of it is because I’m constantly sick. Friendships are simply higher up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs than I usually get, and it’s hard to really stay close when you’re only well enough to be out in society a few times a month. You miss the little jokes and experiences that build and solidify friendships, and when you see people again, there’s an imbalance. You might feel you saw them fairly recently, because you saw them the last time you left the house, but in reality that was three weeks ago, and to them you haven’t been around for a while.
I’ve been told that rebuilding a social life (or depending on how you count, possibly building one for the first time) needs to be a priority in trying to equip myself for college. My inclination is to tell these people to clear off and get a life that doesn’t involve micromanaging mine. Why do you even care? It doesn’t matter. I’m fine. It’s fine. Everything is fine.
In reality, I’m not sure how to parse this problem, let alone solve it. As mentioned previously, I still lack the stamina to do much outside of classes. The notion of making friends with people during class, as has been occasionally suggested, strikes me as paradoxical. After all, how am I supposed to be casual with people when sitting at attention and taking notes? I can’t interrupt class to interact with my classmates, and bothering them in their free time without a pretense seems, at best improper, and a good way to make classes rather awkward.
Trying to puzzle out friendships always gives me the old feeling that I’m missing something- that some fact or piece of social intuition which is critical for being a modern social human has eluded me. When I make friends, it tends to be by accident, and I lack a sense of what is and isn’t proper for a given situation that seems to come intuitively to others. This causes huge uncertainty and anxiety about trying to arrange anything that would allow me to get to know people better. And since my health mean that I pretty much have to arrange social events on my own terms in order to avoid collapsing the house of cards of my health situation, this leaves me in a catch-22.
So my social life isn’t exactly glamorous. I’m not happy with this state of affairs, but I don’t see any ways to remedy it that aren’t going to cost me a great deal in areas that I’m currently aiming to prioritize. If it’s a choice between making friends and getting good grades, getting good grades so I can make progress towards being able to contribute back to society is going to win, hands down. If it’s a choice between making friends, and looking after my health so I can stay alive… well that’s not much of a choice, is it?
But if I can’t say I am happy, I can at least say that I am at peace, which is a marked improvement. I don’t want to jinx anything, but overall things seem to be lining up to work out so far. There are worse problems than getting easy As, and so long as I continue to be healthy and do well, there are plenty of side projects to amuse me.
