“Ooooooooooooomg, wait, ugh I’m not going out tonight and all of my friends are! I’m having such FOMO!” Chances are you or someone you know has whined this sentence once or twice or twenty times in their college career. When the reality sets in that you’re going to be in all night writing a paper while your friends are frat-hopping till the crack of dawn, it’s only natural to become overcome with the familiar sadness of missing a night out with your pals. Much to my friends’ bafflement, I happen to be pretty skilled in conquering the fatality that is FOMO. In order to vanquish this fear of missing out, I am happy to aid you in helping yourself when faced with this devastating disease by providing you with four self-reassurances that usually do the trick for me…
1) You’re Being Super Productive
Go you! Look at you go! Not only are you getting this paper done, but you’re also going to have time to call your grandma back, paint your nails and catch up on some extra reading for your other courses. It’s amazing how many things you can get done within a three-hour time span with minimal distractions from your friends, since they’re clearly not around.
2) Your Liver is Smiling at You
Your liver is truly thanking you tonight for the well-deserved detox. While most nights out on campus consist of pounding shots and shot-gunning beers, your night in consists of water and a possible can or two of diet coke.
3) You’re Catching Up on Your Shows
Yeah, sure you have a paper to do, but as I mentioned before you have a lot more time than you thought. So, sit down and treat yourself to the 3 weeks’ worth of Grey’s Anatomy you missed, cry again to the ending of How I Met Your Mother or guiltily consume yourself with the drama of The Real Housewives of Orange County. Netflix is your oyster, my friend, and it is waiting for you to open it.
4) More Dessert!
Think about it- wouldn’t you rather have two cookies than two shots of vodka? While both have almost the same amount of calories, the cookie definitely tastes better than the alcohol. Unless you’ve found vodka that tastes like a cupcake (and if you have please send it my way), a dessert is usually much more rewarding. Not only can you rationalize replacing the empty calories you would have drank with more dessert- but you’re probably less likely to indulge in the 3 a.m. cheesy bread your friends are drunching on after their night out.
Hey, we go to a school that works hard but is supposed to play harder, right? However, sometimes that lovely mantra is more difficult to live up to than we thought. Thus, our ideally perfectly balanced image of ourselves becomes sadly unattainable. More than likely, most of us will find ourselves facing FOMO in the upcoming semester, and hopefully, with some of these reassuring ideas at our disposal, we can cure FOMO once and for all.