Lighten up

As everyday passes on our picturesque campus and the thermostat takes the slow climb up the centigrades, I am reminded of just how finite our time here at Furman is. With each passing day, the descent towards the last week in April comes faster and faster. Everyone has to have their summer plans set, seniors have to have their life plans set, and on top of all of that there is the oft forgotten reason we are all here - classes, grades, scholastic accolades. Now before any of you crack a molar from stress-induced teeth grinding, I want to say that I am not writing this editorial to remind you all of the reasons you wake up in a pool of your own sweat thinking how your daily schedule could compose the entirety of fmylife.com. I am writing it to stress how important it is to breathe, to go outside and experience life.
There is more to Furman than can be fit in between the lines of a daily planner and I am urging all of you to release yourselves from the half-hour by half-hour rigor that has overtaken campus this year.

So often I hear people, myself included, whine about their classes and how much work they have to do and how much they hate school. Have any of us stopped to think that we might be doing it wrong? If we are not enjoying what we are learning, if all we can get out of scholastic exercise is an anxiety disorder, why are parents and beneficiaries spending so much money over it? By all means, I am not implying we should burn our luxury-priced text books while chanting "we don't need no education" Pink Floyd style. What I am saying is we all need to find time this spring to enjoy learning.

This is probably the last time in our lives where we will be charged to do nothing more than sit around and explore the world we live in. We will never have this opportunity again and we have to find some way to enjoy it. Let us not forget that a joy of learning is probably one of the major reasons we were attracted to Furman in the first place.

Secondarily, far too many students at this school put undue pressure on their extracurricular activities. I understand if you participate in a scholarship granting activity, it's valid to obsess over those things - in fact I wish someone would give me money to obsess over things since I do so much of it for free.

What we do outside of school should encompass things that bring us joy, activities that fortify us and refresh us and let us escape the grind of school. At this point in the year, though, everyone is so stressed out about everything that in some kind of sick extended opposite day everything we are supposed to love gives us hell.

Life is hard and unfair; we all learned that from a young age from our mothers and brothers and sisters and lovers, but college would be a lot more fun if we all loosened up a little.
So I charge you Furman, as the temperature continues to rise, shake the stress off like that cumbersome wool coat. So soon we will find ourselves in the real world, so we might as well enjoy being self absorbed intellectual good-for-nothings until the wave crashes. Who's with me?