“I have three exams on the same day. I hate my life.”
“Why does my professor do this to me?”
“I need coffee if I’m going to survive this day.”
Sound familiar? These are all sentiments most of us share on a regular basis with our friends, especially around this time of year. I know I do, at least. School is hard, and there never seems to be enough time in the day to get everything done.
But let’s be honest. People our age tend to exaggerate. “This class is going to be the death of me.” Is it? Really? Will that class actually make your heart stop beating?
Ellen Degeneres plays on this idea of exaggeration in one of her comedy routines. “People always say things they don’t mean. You know, like people who say ‘the worst thing.’ ‘Oh, the paper cut, that’s the worst thing.’ Is it? Really? Okay… What about pickle juice in your eye? That’s pretty bad, too, isn’t it?”
On the one hand, exaggeration is fun. It makes us feel a little more important and a little more validated that we are conveying the enormity of what we are feeling to another person, and it’s more or less harmless, anyway.
But is it? Words have meaning. Words carry implications. Words are essentially the only way we have to deliberately express exactly what we think. Of course we do not always use our words in this manner, but words are nevertheless how we assert ourselves in society.
Do we ever think about what we are really saying when we complain in this way about our education? We are blatantly dismissing, if not mocking, those who do not get to go to a school like Marquette and would give anything to do so.
We are ignoring the sufferings and sacrifices of girls like 14-year-old Dao Van Hiep in Vietnam, whose story in this New York Times article made my heart ache. Dao wakes up at 3 a.m. to cook for her brother and sister while going over her books. She bikes to school for 90 minutes and arrives 20 minutes early to ensure she is on time. She begs her father to pay for extra tutoring, but at $40, he just cannot afford it.
This is how strongly other people feel about learning. Others understand education to be the key to achieving a better life. It is often the only thing on which they can place hope. Learning is literally at our fingertips, 24 hours a day, and I have to ask, do we feel that same passion?
With a week and half of classes left before exams, stress is practically palpable on campus. The reason for our stress is completely valid, and we do not have to diminish it. But let’s make an effort to be mindful of the way we talk about our stress. Let’s remember that we are lucky we get to be stressed about finals. We don’t have to be stressed about feeding our siblings at the age of 14. We don’t have to be stressed about not having shoes to protect our feet while walking for miles to get to school. Let’s count our blessings that for most of us, the bulk of our stress right now is simply the consequence of getting a $40,000-a-year, first-rate education. And let’s ease up on complaining about the misery of our lives.
What’s the point of waiting until New Year’s to resolve to change our behavior? This can be the Thanksgiving Resolution of the Marquette community: remembering that we chose to go to college and to make that college Marquette. We are (usually) having the time of our lives here in Thrillwaukee. Finals are a tiny price to pay for our privilege.
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