A complaint about complaining
By Kathleen Mackey
It’s that time of year again. As the temperature drops and the leaves start to fall, so do the optimistic spirits of John Carroll students as midterms season quickly approaches. Lately I, too, have been feeling that drop in spirits. I’d like to consider myself an upbeat person but with exams looming and commitments filling up my calendar, I’ve noticed that my impulse to complain is stronger than ever.
All summer long, I was so eager to come back to campus, be with my friends again and start yet another year at a place I love so dearly. Fast forward to now, just over a month into the semester, and suddenly I’m finding myself looking at every day as another hurdle to get over. It seems to be the case for a lot of fellow students too.
The more and more I’ve listened to myself complaining this past week, the more I’ve realized that I’m just bringing myself down for no reason and, quite frankly, nobody else cares. In fact, and this may shock you, it accomplishes absolutely nothing. I could whine on about how I have a bunch of exams to prepare for and endless reading to catch up on, all while managing other commitments in my life, and guess what? It doesn’t change the fact that I have to do it. This isn’t at all a groundbreaking realization, but these days, it seems like I need that reminder.
All it does is evoke a negative mindset when, the reality is, this is what college is about. Considering I’m a third-year student, the stress and workload shouldn’t come as a surprise. If it was all easy and smooth, nothing would feel worthwhile in the end. After all, it’s the stressful days trapped in the library that makes weekend nights spent with friends that much more enjoyable.
I’ll admit, sometimes it does become truly overwhelming and I feel like I hardly find time in my week just to take a breather. We all have those days and weeks, and sometimes it’s hard to not let it get to us. It’s natural, especially at this point in the semester. There’s nothing wrong with venting about it and, believe me, I probably won’t stop any time soon.
But there are so many little things we can do to make stressful times more positive. More often than not, when someone asks me how I am or how my day has been, I find myself immediately responding with something negative like “I have a million things to do and I just want to sleep” or some other form of a relatable college student response. However, half the time I respond in such a way out of habit because, for some reason, it feels easier and “more relatable” to complain, rather than talk about something good and positive about my day.
As I was conjuring up the idea of writing about this topic for this week’s column, my roommate came back from class and explained how her professor scolded them for complaining about their assignments and told them that things will be much worse once they enter the real world. It prompted my roommate to wonder if that is, in fact, the case — if college really is better than post-grad life. While it’s all personal opinion, I think it’s all about perspective. For me, things almost always seem much worse in the moment than they truly are in the long run. Reminding myself of that always forces me to look at arduous times with a more optimistic perspective and, ultimately, make the most of those times as best as I can.
I don’t know if life automatically gets easier after college but I do know this: I don’t want to look back and regret all the times I wished away time by waiting for stressful periods of the semester to be over. Before I know it, my college years really will be over and, to reference Andy Bernard from The Office, I’ll be wishing I knew I was in the good old days before I’d left them.
