The week before midterm break, a time that for me should have been a sigh of relief before heading to New York City and then back home to Ohio, was in fact a failure of epic proportions. I was so sick that, by Monday night, I had to leave my night class early to go home and immediately fall asleep. I spent the next two days sleeping, eating, coughing, napping and then going back to sleep. I couldn’t go to any of my classes, and fell even further behind than I was already going to be because I was still going to New York on Wednesday night. 

Now, being sick is already a terrible feeling, especially when you’re running a more than a 101 degree fever, but my reason for falling ill was making things even worse. It would be one thing if I had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and caught a passing bug, but as everyone I knew wasn’t afraid to tell me, I was almost certainly betrayed by my own immune system.

I had been working myself to the bone, trying to put out a Record, while being in tech week for the premiere of the play I wrote and directed. Evidently, my body had had enough. Even my professors were apparently talking before class about how it was only natural that I would be having such a spectacular crash after the week I had had. 

So, I had plenty of time to lay there and wallow while I was trapped in bed and think about how all of the commitments that had led this to happen were still going to be true after break, once I was better. Many people were telling me that this meant it was a sign from me that it was time to scale things back and take on less responsibility until the year is over. The problem is that everything I do is still an ongoing responsibility until at least May term. And I am not in the business of letting anyone down, which has clearly come around to cost me. 

Yet, even after all that, I can’t bring myself to change anything. I didn’t adapt any of my schedule, and I have continued to say yes to everything I want to do. It maybe isn’t the smartest move, but college has taught me enough about myself to know that this is an uphill battle that, in addition to everything else — I’ll become less of a workaholic after school, I guess. 

 This editorial feels as though it was intended by the powers that be to reflect on prioritizing what really matters and taking care of yourself, but, unfortunately, it’s more a realization of my own stubbornness. Both for doing what I want, but also in my unwavering commitment to ensure that I never let anyone down again.

While I don’t want to be haunted by these types of thoughts, and I know it’s important to be able to rest without feeling guilty, I don’t know that I should be anyone’s role model for a healthy, balanced lifestyle. I have clearly taken Jason Samuel’s frequent comments of “work-life balance isn’t real” to heart. I don’t know that I’m at the “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” mentality yet, but I do often tell myself that “I’ll sleep once I graduate”. My work will sustain me,  in the meantime, until I walk that stage and let myself take a weeklong nap, but it’s really the people that keep me going. As long as I’ve got all of them, I know I’ll make it to the end intact.