Man has it been a while since my last post (like an entire semester). I can’t believe I’m still a functioning human being. Oddly enough, my first Junior semester in college has reflected my first Junior semester in high school, extremely challenging and pulling nonexistent time out of the nether. It feels slightly ephemeral that my workload was about 50 hours a week on average apart from classes, my job as a student systems administrator, extracurriculars, and spending time with friends. This past semester, I felt like a workaholic but I wasn’t one. Somehow, I seemed to make even more time for branching out and meeting new people, joining new clubs, and exploring overall. It was tiring though. I know I’m burnt out from how I’ve spent my winter break (playing league of legends and Battlefield 1 the whole month). I feel awful, yet I feel great. What a dichotomy.
As usual with shopping period, I had some list of classes I wanted to take. I realized that I didn’t have any humanities classes (or rather the ones I wanted to take were all full) and was rather scared at the monster I’d become taking all STEM’s for a semester. After shopping period, I couldn’t let go. I had grown attached to my 5 STEM classes. It was at this point that I realized and started accepting my identity as a masochist. Truth be told, I think most computer science majors are masochists but I digress. In not wanting to compromise, I ended up attending the ping pong club as well as co-lead the Bridges International chapter at Brown. You see, we have an 8 person suite which includes a living room. I ended up caving and buying a ping pong table for it. I’ve been playing with my suite mates everyday, and now we’re considering creating a ping pong gym in our suite (somewhat kidding).
Anyway… back to the focus of this post. I ended up taking a radical semester. It was 5 hard STEM classes resulting in me being busy about 85 hours of the week with other obligations included. Yet somehow, I still had time to pursue my interests, exercise, and get my 8 hours of beauty sleep every night. I’m not sure how it was done, I really wish I knew. I guess what I’m trying to say is that limits can and should be pushed in college, and not necessarily just academic ones. Now that I’ve experienced the empowering extremity of academics on steroids, I’m going to navigate my balance and drift to the other extremity of extracurriculars on steroids. To be fair, this was somewhat planned as I’ve been wanting to have a super chill senior year. After this semester, I just feel like a socially inept academic robot despite my status as a social butterfly freshman year. It’s time to change that.