Stepping Back

We’re all familiar with the stresses and pressures that we undergo as students of Exeter. We’ve all been there: 10 p.m. with half of your English narrative done—which is due tomorrow—and suddenly the realization hits you that you still have biology homework and a Spanish test to study for, and you also have class at 8 a.m. You realize it’s only Monday night, and you still have four more days until the ever-too-short weekend, and you tear your hair out because this school can be too much sometimes.However, at least for most people, that’s not every night. It’s not even half of the nights. And yet, it seems like that’s the only thing you ever hear about the workload at Exeter. Generally, people will not be babbling on about their manageable workload or their decent amount of sleep. Nobody will tell you that they actually feel comfortable with the amount of homework. It seems that people only talk about those nights when they are swamped with work and get four hours of sleep. Sometimes it can seem like that really is all that ever happens.So how much of that stress and pressure do students really experience, and how much of it is made up? Is it possible that we sometimes make our lives seem just a little bit harder than they actually are?I believe that’s what we do, and it happens for a variety of reasons. When we come to Exeter for the first time we become immersed in this culture of complaining, and eventually it comes as second nature to just go along with it and act exactly as everyone else does, overlooking the good times in favor of the bad. Sometimes it is because we want to feel validated, and we hope that the amount of work that we do is adequate, so we try to make others think that we’re always working all the time in order to keep that image and not seem like the slacker who doesn’t meet expectations.I’m not saying that as Exonians we never experience stress. Anyone who has spent more than a single term at this school would agree that it gets stressful, and after my first full week of being an upper, on top of being a prep and a lower, I would be one of the last to suggest that. I’m simply saying that sometimes it isn’t as bad as we make it seem; every once in a while, maybe it would be good for us to take a step back from the negatives and consider the positives, and enjoy the times that we have had here. Maybe then, when we look back at our time at Exeter, and instead of reflecting on four years of stress, we can appreciate what we did here and be glad that we have the opportunity to call ourselves Exonians.