It’s 3 a.m., the intersection between early morning and late night. My brain is numb, powered solely by cups of brimming coffee, attempting to crank out the last 500 words of an essay/studying for a test/working an assignment I know I should’ve started earlier, but I was at a debate tournament/at a tennis tournament/visiting family/reading political magazines. A sense of defeat rushes over me, and I sit on my bed, staring at the illuminated scream, wishing I could turn frustration into productivity, but I am paralyzed by the strangling stress.
For me, this has happened so many times during my high school years. At about three to four am, I hit a wall built from the ground up by the knowledge that I have four hours left until morning, then three, then two, then one, then…
The first time I remember I pulled a late night for homework. I was a sophomore, attempting to crank out an essay on the character development in Mr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I heard my mom’s padded footsteps approaching my room and, knowing she was coming to chastise me, hurriedly closed my laptop, like that would help that fact that I was awake, fully dressed, with all the lights on, at 4 am. My mom cracked open the room to my door, squinting and half asleep. “What are you doing?”, she said, her voice drenched with exhaustion. I responded frantically, “I have to get this done. I have to turn it in. I can’t-”
That was the first of many nights where I got locked in this echo-chamber with myself, expecting nothing less than perfection. I am pounding on the walls of my own expectation, yelling for someone to let me out, without realizing that the key has been in my pocket the entire time.
The other day, after returning from a long day at school, I rushed to the kitchen where I proceeded to stuff an entire brownie in my mouth. My mom, looking on with apprehension, chided “Hey-go get a plate, sit down, and take your time. You might get crumbs all over the floor.”
I proceeded to sit there for 20 minutes, contemplating the possible effect that my crumbs on the floor could have, calculating the cost-benefit analysis for my stress-eating habits. I mean, come on! It’s a crumb. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter. Yes, a crumb can be messy but it is quite literally a speck in the grand scheme of things. Staying up to study a few extra hours is like not wanting to have a crumb on the floor. The difference between a 90 and a 100 is negligible, but the difference between 10 hours of sleep and 2 hours of sleep on your mental health is astronomical.
What actually happens if I turn an assignment in late, or slightly less than perfect, or-unimaginably-not at all? Does the world blow up? Do I suddenly cease to exist? Can I never do well again on an assignment? I’m not and I would never advocate for students to blow off their work, but, at the same time, is it worth compromising your physical and mental health for? Is it worth staying up all night long, crying onto your laptop, for the extra perfection? Often times, with today’s increasing college competition, with college acceptance rates at an all-time low, students are stacking up AP classes like candy before Halloween at the price of their mental health. We are breeding an unsustainable culture of competition that is wreaking havoc on many teenagers lives.
I admit, I am a hypocrite. I am a extremely diligent with a full International Diploma program course load. But what I have learned is that sometimes, it’s okay not to be perfect.
Sometimes, hurrying through an assignment to have time to read a book for enjoyment (I know-the idea seems crazy) is okay. Sometimes, it is okay to spend more time absorbing and understanding the classwork for your own personal benefit than for a numerical GPA boost. To me, numerical success in grades is not as important as my academic and personal enrichment.
Currently, I am avoiding an essay on government’s violations of individual’s rights in states of emergency. I know I will finish it, since I only have a few hundred words left, but I’ve taken a brief recess to write this slew of thoughts. This break from my homework that I am currently taking doesn’t make me irresponsible, or negligent. As I pour my feelings onto the page, the stress, the anxiety, the pressure from being a student seems bearably light. I think I might even go to bed early, at nine pm, tonight. If I could give one piece of advice to my freshman-year self, it would be that, sometimes, it is beneficial to put the homework away and take a breather.
