By Mattie Stinson, Stentorian Staff Writer
On one of the most important deadlines for seniors at NCSSM—the October 15th Early Action deadline for UNC Chapel Hill applications—almost every single math class had a test or quiz. Excluding the treacherous sicknesses being spread around campus (that I always happen to fall victim to), the already packed schedules of NCSSM students, and the normal mid-semester burnout, placing a quiz on the one day you know that almost every NCSSM senior has a major application due is damn near malicious.
I saw my peers walking around fatigued, dark circles marked under their eyes—a prize won from whatever assignments were accomplishments of last night’s sleep deprivation—and Celsius ailing their exhaustion. A recent conversation in my Critical Legal Studies class entailed the many ways NCSSM students use their wits to damage their health in benefit of getting more work done. I’ve heard of caffeine pills, getting your body used to running on less sleep so a 4-hours-of-sleep-a-night routine doesn’t make you feel tired, and, of course, daily energy drinks.
But why sacrifice sleep when you could’ve used that time you spent with friends? A very valid question, except, it overlooks a few key details. Firstly, there are many instances where NCSSM students turn down social events and opportunities for the sake of work. Secondly, many times people multitask by doing work with friends. Thirdly, because we live at the same place where we learn (or, sell our souls for the sake of education), there is often a horrible work/life balance. Social time is necessary to not lose yourself fully in the work and to actually step away from it for an hour or two.
The nature of this school is ambition and doing (having?) what it takes to get the job done, even if it comes at a cost (and it usually does).
I have been sick more weeks in the semester than not and have only gotten less than ten individual classes excused by the clinic. I’ve gone to class while nauseated, slightly feverish, and in a haze due to relying on cough medicine. For weeks, I have walked around looking like Bella Swan from Breaking Dawn Part 1 (thank you Kolby Gupton for that comparison…), constantly fatigued by the seemingly never-ending plagues I’ve caught this semester (and I’m definitely not alone in that). Sending a sick student to class only leads to more sick students until the whole school has caught the same cold and by the time that sickness is done, patient zero has started spreading the next one.
We spend so much of our time lost in our work and poor health that the only thing to make it a little bit better is to make it seem a little more picturesque; we make an aesthetic of our sicknesses and our sleep deprivation and our mold poisoning and our struggles as students because it’s usually the only thing we can do about it.
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