It seems silly to watch hamsters spinning on a wheel. Turning about, with no variation to what they are doing. Unfortunately, sometimes it feels like I am on my own human hamster wheel. I’m just going about my day with little variation to my normal routine.
It is easy to just feel like things are getting overloaded on us as the semester races towards completion, especially when we are forced to think about our plans for next fall. We can’t even fully enjoy this semester without having to make plans for the next one. Sometimes we’re going so fast that we don’t even notice all the things that are happening in our lives. It seems like life passes us by.
I see so many differences between how life is during the beginning of the year and now. At the beginning of the year, I tell myself that I will go at least semi-regularly to office hours. Now, I’m lucky enough if I’m awake and focused in class. In the beginning of the semester, you read all of the weekly readings that your teachers assign as homework, and you take good notes on the articles. But by the end of the semester you consider it a good day if you even get a chance to read the title of the article. At the start it was easy for me to make big goals and daydream about all of the activities I would do to keep myself occupied during my week. By the end of the semester, I’m just happy if I finish my homework three minutes before class starts.
Why does this happen to us? Is it fatigue? Is it doing the same thing day in and day out? I don’t know, exactly. All I know is that it is hard to find the motivation that existed during the beginning of the semester. I wish I could take time to smell the roses, and carpe diem, but the truth is I can’t.
I wonder how to get out of this hamster-wheel fatigue. It would be easy to just go somewhere so I can be re-inspired, but I don’t have the time to do that. It’s easy to just “make it through” to the end of the year, but why not try to enjoy each day and try to bring back that spark that existed during the beginning of the year. I don’t know what it takes or what I can realistically do to return to that time when everything seems new and goals are easy to make and stand behind, but I’m going to see if I can find out.
With this new warm weather that has returned to campus, I hope we can all remember the optimism that comes naturally in the beginning of the school year. I hope if you are on that hamster wheel too, you can find the time to step off and enjoy the rest of your semester.
Maria Gellepes is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at mg887@bu.edu
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