If you’ve asked me how I am doing lately, you might have noticed that my response has ranged from “shambling around,” to plain “shambling,” to, more frequently, the slightly more disillusioned “my life is in shambles.”
Like Randy Jackson’s “In it to win it!” on American Idol, “my life is in shambles” has become a sort of defining catchphrase. It’s my most frequent Twitter hashtag—if it were set to a bodacious beat, it would be my theme song.
All of this is probably a sign that I’m becoming stale in the vernacular and need to learn some new, wittier vocabulary (#mylifeisninshambles). Still, in my ridiculously hectic Duke University experience—where I’m shambling 24/7, running around and attempting to fulfill my multitudinous obligations—it’s become a sort of life constant.
So why is my life in shambles?
I’ll admit it. I’m, well, overexerting myself. Drastically. I won’t go into specifics, but this semester, I’ve overloaded and taken on a few too many obligations. Perhaps, like many Duke students do, perhaps more. In any case, it’s too much.
All of this is probably the result of the achievement culture that I, and many Duke students, have been raised in. My family has always encouraged me to “do better” (stereotypical Indian/Asian Tiger parenting not withstanding). Regardless, my mom’s insistence that I raise the bar has forced me to raise my own expectations, and now I’m the one encouraging myself to “do better,” challenging myself to as much as possible.
Let’s be real here. I have way too much work. My obligations run rampant, such that I have no idea what to do with myself, and my only way to come to terms with my academic ordeal is to utter the ubiquitous phrase “my life is in shambles.”
Call it falsely moralizing, but “do better” has been the cause and result of my shambling parrot-cry. It’s my desire to do better, you see, that has caused me to overexert myself in the first place. And it’s that same desire that has made my life so full of shambles—in order to do better, to fulfill my load to my best ability, I have no choice but to struggle and shamble around.
And, weirdly enough, it works! Faced with the relentless pressure of my workload, and a desire not to spend my post-graduate years living in a box, I have no choice but to, well, work. To work, work and work some more. And, even more strangely, I actually get my work done (most of the time). Sure, I’ve flaked on readings, or done fewer physics problems than I should before a quiz, or come running, out of breath, to class, having finished the assignment only seconds before, but for the most part, I’ve been doing just fine.
Before this semester, my time management skills were at a big fat zero. I was lazy. I lived by the motto of “If you do it at the last minute, it’ll only take a minute!” Frankly, I spent long periods of time doing next to nothing, and scrambled to finish all my work at the last minute. Needless to say, I didn’t do as well in my classes as I would have liked to, but, given free time, I just couldn’t do anything with it. How could I bring myself to do work when I had so much time lying in front of me?
Now, no longer able to idle away large amounts of free time, I am forced to thoroughly plan out my workload. I do readings in between classes. I plan out essays in the shower. I even finish some assignments early. My productivity has increased a hundredfold.
That’s not to say my new lifestyle is a walk in the park. My newfound productivity and organization have proven incredibly stressful. I feel as if I’m constantly climbing into an avalanche, unsure if I can finish my work. Oh, and I average about four hours of sleep a day—that’s why my given mood always revolves around “shambling.”
But this semester has taught me that these drawbacks of overexertion may be a fair price to pay for its rewards. I’ve done some of my best work so far this semester, even while shambling. So far, my grades haven’t suffered (disclaimer: I probably only have about five grades total at this point). So I believe that perhaps taking on a little more than you can handle can actually prove to help more than it hurts. I’d even encourage it.
After all, every time I proclaim that “my life is in shambles,” it’s because I’m just trying to do better, to fulfill all my obligations to the best of my abilities. It’s because I’m challenging myself academically and pushing my limits well beyond what I thought they were.
In short, a desire to do better signifies that you care, that you’re passionate about learning, understanding and delivering. At the end of the day, isn’t that the most important thing about a college education?
Indu Ramesh is a Trinity junior. Her column runs every other Wednesday.
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