Being a full-time student at Albion College today consists of spending around 12 hours each week in a classroom due to the module system, and this does not account for homework or time spent studying.
Considering how the world around us has changed recently, something I don’t understand is the pressure to feel obligated to add extra curricular activities into our already overloaded schedules from the module system. I don’t understand why we are clinching on to the idea of making things seem as normal as possible because they are not. Due to an overload of classwork from the module system, adding on extra curriculars is overwhelming for any average human being.
In my mind, we should just accept things as they are and make realistic adjustments.
On a personal level, this winter has been difficult for me. I’ve had to deal with deaths due to COVID-19. I’ve had to deal with family drama. I’ve had to deal with mental health challenges. In spite of all that, I’ve had to also pull myself together the Sunday before my first class and attend and help facilitate a club meeting all for the sake of keeping things as normal as possible.
Keeping things as normal as possible sounds like, “I am trying to keep my life in balance even though the world around me is not,” which is not a natural or realistic response. What we are doing is the opposite of what nature is telling us to do, which is to adapt over the course of time. Not try to change the way things are happening around me.
If you look at the history of our species over the course of millions of years, we have continued to adapt to our environments so that we can continue to survive and thrive on this planet. Recently, as the use of technology has ramped up, our need to adapt to our environment has dwindled.
Instead of traveling to go see our loved ones, we send them a text or a video call. If we get bored, we turn on the TV or open an app. So, it’s no coincidence that once a natural disaster, like this COVID-19 pandemic, hits and limits our ability to do the things we’ve once loved, we don’t adapt. We let technology lead the way.
We have thrown everything on Zoom, Google Meet, TikTok, Instagram Live, FaceBook Live and more. This overload of technology is pushing us toward our peak.
We can’t take this technological world anymore because we are barely surviving in our natural environment. Now that our natural environment is under a natural disaster, we have nowhere to go to take a breath, relax and be natural human beings again.
We can’t stay ahead if there is no “ahead” in the near future. The youngest of us are 18 years old with over 60 years ahead of us, and we are living our lives as if we are in a race to get to those 60 or so years down the line.
Our social lives are morphing into our social media lives and becoming a part of our technological world. Our academics are taking a front seat over our mental health. These are two things that the technological world around us does not care for, and I know this to be true because we are not robots. We were not made to be constantly surrounded by technology.
Albion College, we need a moment to breathe. We need to focus on the most important thing, which is our natural world, and leave the rest on the backburner.
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