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By Alysa Ciene Alcantara
Admit it or not, most of us are not privileged enough to unwind on weekends or after work. Beyond the working hours, not everyone can afford to rest because they’re needed to fulfill another role – take ourselves being students for the day, working adults at night, and being a child to your family in-between.
As a third-year college student taking up Bachelor in Arts in Journalism, I can be living proof of those people who told everyone countless times the words “I don’t want this anymore.” It has been a challenging start of the academic year, for what I am encountering today isn’t what I have imagined in my sophomore year. It is more exhausting and mentally tiring, but maybe this is it; this is what’s waiting for us in the path we have chosen a few years back.
The question is, how am I managing to stay above my deadlines?
I happened to stumble upon this video on Tiktok with the caption, “How to rise above your deadlines?” and it only took seconds before I decided to download it without watching the whole video. At that time, our academic responsibilities were piling up; and I felt like floating in the clouds because I was too fuzzy to absorb everything. The video showed tricks in Microsoft Excel, a spreadsheet software. Maybe a lot of us may have already known but personally, it was my first time. It was where we could arrange your to-be-passed activities, color-code them per course, customize its sequence based on their due dates, and voila, you got your college life figured out!
Kidding aside, I did it, and guess what? I can keep up with my pending deliverables, and I still got to rest. Although achieving the supposedly 8-hour rest is out of the question.
Let me share what other things I involved myself with to lessen the stress I’m experiencing:
I have a circle of friends outside my college circle. It helped a lot to converse with people you can treat as an outside eye on your life. Remember the saying that “If you have problems, talk to a stranger and you’ll feel more relieved”? I can say it’s true, although your safety must be prioritized; I am pointing this out in the sense that having people who are not included in your daily routines relax you more, with no judgment.
Learn when to say no. Because people won’t stop asking unless you, yourself, have drawn the line; You have to make sure that your boundaries are known to avoid having conflict in your personal and professional time. It might be more difficult, especially now that we are utilizing the blended learning approach to education and even work. But there’s always a window of time where you can be at peace, may it be a minute or shorter – just breathe, as much as possible.
I engage myself with the thing I love the most – music. In my spare time, I sing and play my heart out. There’s nothing that can calm me more than music. It is what I have been associating myself with since then. It became the witness for everything I have been through in life. In all moments and feelings in which I got every time. I speak of tones and metaphors rather than the actual emotions I feel at the moment. I have been like that all my life.
I always pause to remember what I want to be and why. It all boils down to the reason why I started this journey – I want to be good at something. And at the same time, I want to be a voice that can be heard. Even at the most remote places in the world. There is a fuel to my innate fire that can’t be put down by anything, it may be weakened but it will not fade, that’s for sure.
But still, not all of us afford to live up to our dreams. We got responsibilities and plot twists we can never be prepared for. What we can do is to keep our fire burning and be as proactive as we can.
Tired? Have your time.
Change of heart? Have your way.
No choice? Be kind.
Hurt? Feel it.
As harsh as it is, we only got ourselves for ourselves at the end of the day. Life isn’t playing a blaming game just because someone you expected to be beside you isn’t there and is enjoying his life. We all got our crosses to carry and support isn’t always an option.
Let us start working on ourselves to be better while acknowledging what we lack and what hurts us.
We can only grow by going through the rough patch of the road.
I can hear the graduation march song. The clapping sounds. The never-ending congratulations.
I can see you walking down the aisle wearing a victorious smile – that’s because you got yourself into a place that is customized for you.
You have risen above your workload, and there’s more to come.
You do you, warrior!
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