When I was growing up, all I
would ever hear from my parents, aunts, uncles, older cousins, and countless
other people significantly older than me was how great college was. It was not
only an important part of your life, but also a fun and social experience, if
rather stressful and challenging at times. My high school faculty and many
other academic figures, near and far, repeated this notion, though they tended
to slightly reinforce the responsibility part.
Guess false advertising isn't
limited to product commercials.
Well, actually, maybe I'm being
too harsh. Maybe it's just simple nostalgia, mixed with lack of connection with
the current times and how things have changed on the part of all those people.
Or a mixture of all the above reasons.
In any case, for me and countless
other college students of my generation, we're experiencing pretty much only
the stress and responsibility.
Sort of like how people like to
say we should "work hard, play hard" and then completely forget the
"play hard" part.
Then, we get chewed out for not
focusing or working at 200% capacity.
News flash: Humans are not meant
to live under these conditions! That's why we see all these problems called anxiety... depression... mental illness. Etc.
All work and no play doesn't just
make Jack a dull boy; it also makes him a sick and broken boy.
For all our bickering, we college
students have at least one important similarity to working people: we don't get
a break. Period.
We get hardly, if any, down time.
And even then we're often still trying to recover from carrying dozens of
anvils on our back.
To the people who moan about "those spoiled people" (especially youth) in the present day having everything, a high standard
of living comfort, and never facing any real challenges, I pose one question:
What is the payoff of having that
high standard of comfortable living if we can barely focus on getting a drink
during a break lasting a few minutes and don't even get our emotional, social,
and psychological needs met at a bare minimum because we are all so busy?
For the record, I would do
anything to have more down and social time like the older generations did. And
I know I am far from alone in making that statement.
