5….4…3…2…1… SPRING BREAK! This mental countdown kept me going during the week just before spring break. As the days inched forward, my excitement for the approaching week began to increase by leaps and bounds, until I couldn’t take it any longer. Spring break was finally here and no essays, assignments or problem sets could keep me from enjoying the upcoming week.
However, Spring Break was over before I knew it and now, here I am, back at Cornell, trying to catch-up with all of the work I refused to work on during the break. The mountain of work was already large to begin with and with every class I attend, the professors graciously add to this enormous heap. Now, mixed into this equation is the fact that my body and mind are still stuck in “Spring Break Standard Time.” Basically, I need a minimum of twelve hours of sleep, starting from midnight and ending at noon.
To give you an idea of how prepared I am to return to a regular school schedule, one day, I decided to take a one hour nap to catch up on my sleep and then get back to work. My body decided to do otherwise. I slept through the entire evening and woke up after five hours feeling pretty refreshed but with an even higher mountain of work. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t catch up!
Now the reality is that this semester has been pretty stressful and Spring Break, honestly, couldn’t have come at a better time. However, catching up and getting back to the grind of Cornell work is proving more difficult than I thought it could be. Truth be told, sometimes, Cornell can be extremely overwhelming and trying to make sense of everything and trying to stay on top can be quite difficult.
Spring Break broke my rhythm entirely and piecing it back together is not the easiest of tasks. Half the time is spent reminiscing about the carefree days of the past week while the other half is spent trying to understand all the things that are going on around me. The thing is, the break wasn’t nearly long enough to allow me to relax and free myself from the stress. Throughout the week, I subconsciously worried about the work due once I returned and the constant updates from school were not alleviating. So, while I was at home, my mind never really left school.
Honestly speaking, after getting the break, coming back to how things were before I left is quite tough and no matter how hard I try, it feels like I’m scaling a mountain whose peak is nowhere in sight. We can only move forward from here. That will allow us to find our motivation again and remind us what it is that we want from this semester.
Chandreyee Mukherjee is a freshman in the College of Engineering. She enjoys singing, eating and daydreaming whenever she can spare five minutes from homework. Her blog appears on alternate Wednesdays this semester and she can be reached at [email protected].