Letting Go

We almost always seem to talk about the overworked-typeA-perfectionist prototype that exists in student culture. You know, the person who's in six different clubs, has a research position, works out, maintains an adequate social life (at least from what Facebook shows) and is always in a great mood. We also talk a lot about stress. The stress we impose on ourselves, the stress during exams we can't avoid, the stress over how we can't take care of our stressed selves...it becomes an endless cycle.   It's so easy to talk about how we've all been there or how we've all managed to avoid it, but know someone stuck in the trap of wanting to be able -no, firmly believing- that they can do it all. That's the thing, it's always so easy to talk about all of the things we do to overwork ourselves, but when do we catch ourselves in doing so, and instead make the right decision to avoid this? I found myself in this position a few weeks ago, as I realized I still am that person who thinks that everything can be done.  I mean, I've blogged about stress and overworking yourself, about caffeine and the need to be organized. In many ways I've acknowledged the other sides of this problem, but I was still attempting the impossible juggling act. I was trying to be the Jedi, in fact it's pictures like these that only encouraged my attempts to try to do it all. This was mostly from my own feeling that I had to choose between sacrificing one of the above. And here's the secret: you don't have to do any of that, so long as you don't go overboard. It's not a matter of what to give up, but a matter of understanding what needs priority, and that sleep and sanity have been and always will be crucial. And since I was going way overboard, after a lot of thought, I realized I needed more time when it came to school. More specifically with, you know, the books and stuff. ROSI has been good to me in giving me every class I had wanted; classes I want to fully immerse myself in. But to do this, I had to relieve my beyond school workload and this meant taking a (hopefully temporary!) break from co-hosting Beyond the Classroom. CIUT has been a wonderful learning experience, and I couldn't be more thankful to Darcy Brioux, Ken Stowar and Leah Getchell for giving me the chance. Coming to this decision was more than difficult, but unfortunately, push came to shove and I realized I couldn't do another semester of being a pike place fuelled crazy lady. The kind of crazy no amount of gifs on Tumblr could really describe. -Vahini