Flashback— it’s December 13th. You’ve finished your finals, so you sit down to scroll through Yale Course Search with a nice cup of hot chocolate and snow falling gently outside. This looks interesting, you think as you click open the syllabus of a course titled 19th Century Poetic Witchcraft Amidst the Industrial Revolution. Add to worksheet. Great! One out of four done. You see another, then another, then another, and revel in the fact that in terms of classes, the world is yours. There are no limits. You are a vessel for knowledge and spring semester is going to be the best semester yet.
Then the first week of classes hits and you’re left feeling bleak. Your classes, while all fascinating and led by incredible professors, just aren’t doing it for you. The Dark Academia daydream you imagined is more of an unceremonious nightmare.
You start to wonder if it’s the classes— or maybe just you.
It’s not you.
There are so many reasons why your classes just don’t feel right for some reason. This year especially, extenuating circumstances have robbed us of a bit of that first week back magic. For one thing, we’ve been away from school for two entire months. When we lose that routine for such a long period of time, it’s incredibly difficult to start back up again. Second, you are taking classes in your bedroom. On a computer screen. Twinkly lights and movie posters can’t fill a void the size of massive stone archways and lecture halls filled with kindred spirits.
If your schedule just seems… meh, know that you’re not alone. We’re all grappling with the fact that college just isn’t the way we thought it would be. School has lost that spark which comes from human interaction, spontaneity, and a sense of place.
My advice to you is: don’t give up. Though it might feel like the right move in the moment, procrastinating will only make you feel worse. Try to get your work done early so that you can close the laptop and do something non school related that reminds you that you exist as a human being rather than a Zoom Zombie. If you can, find ways to connect with the course material so that you can draw something positive from this academic semester. If you can’t find the joy in your learning, create the joy. Remember why you are studying what you’re studying and do it with the knowledge that the future is getting brighter day by day. And so are you.
We are in this together!