If there’s one thing that every college student has in common, it’s that at some point all of us will get sick. After personally having struggled with “the plague” that has gone around campus the last few weeks, these are the seven basic stages of sickness that I have seen from others and experienced.
Stage One : Denial
You start to realize everyone else around you is sniffling and complaining of sore throats. Since you have a superior immune system, you know you are fine and you try to ignore the growing number of sneezing students around you.
Stage Two: Anger
Since you are healthy and have only sneezed twice, you start to loathe the sick students around you who are still showing up to class and probably infecting you. You immediately hate anyone who coughs or sneezes because it distracts you from the professor.
Stage Three: Lockdown
Realizing the plague has spread more and more, now infecting your friend group, you immediately barricade yourself from the outside world. Afterall, no one can infect you if you’re locked in your room, right? Right?!
Stage Four: Bargaining
After a few days spent avoiding everyone, your own throat begins to hurt and you begin to sneeze a lot. Instead of accepting that you have caught “the plague”, you try to bargain with yourself. You have two papers, three exams, club meetings and laundry to do after all! You can be sick in three days. In three days, you will let yourself lay in bed and drink tea and sleep all day, but right now you just need to be healthy because now is not the time.
Stage Five : Acceptance
After trying to put off your ever growing symptoms, you finally accept that you have, in fact, caught “the plague” despite taking that multi-vitamin your mom gave you one time. You go to the local pharmacy and stock up on every single medicine you could possibly need. You put on your comfiest sweats, make tea and snuggle up to watch Netflix.
Stage Six : Sick
You’ve gone through at least three boxes of tissues, your head hurts and you have no idea what day it is or if it’s nighttime. Anytime someone asks how you feel, you casually let them know that you’re dying and that no one has ever been as sick as you are at that moment.
Stage Seven: Panic
After what seems like a month of lying on your deathbed, you finally wake up and can breathe out of your nose again. Instead of enjoying that the pounding headache has diminished, the realization that you have missed way too many classes sets in. Will you fail out now? Will you parents disown you for failing out?
At the end of the day though, getting sick is inevitable. So drink some tea, wrap up in a fuzzy blanket and just remember that everyone around you is probably going through the same thing