AHH! It is 10:43 am, my alarm didn’t go off, and by the time I get to campus, the midterm I should be in will be halfway over! Not only am I running late for this huge test, but now I am flustered and even more stressed out than I was when I accidentally fell asleep on my desk sometime shortly after the sun came up ... this is going to be the best day ever, and that midterm was only the first item on today’s to-do list.
Now I have to run through my apartment like a tornado, grabbing books and notes and handy snacks, and more-than-likely forgetting something important that I will remember when it is too late. If everyone else is lucky, I may even take a few minutes to apply some deodorant and brush my hair and teeth before heading out the door. It is time to play the game of “How quickly can I get to campus without pulling a muscle or passing out from an oxygen deficit?”—looks like I have managed to trim three minutes from my normal commute time today.
I can see the building door ahead through my tunnel vision, and the entryway is buzzing with pedestrian traffic. There is another student a few yards ahead of me heading for the same door I have chosen, and I anticipate the door being held open so that I don’t even have to break stride. I have almost reached my destination and THUD! Yes, that was the door slamming in my face, and now I have gone from stressed to outraged—could this day get any better?
If this scenario sounds all too familiar to you, then you have experienced the wonderful time of year when the leaves change and the tests multiply at the speed of mouse reproduction, until you are so bogged down with work that you can’t see straight or tell 5 am from 5 pm. With the fall foliage comes midterm season, a two- or three-week span of chaos that could make or break a semester’s grades. This is the time of the year when students really learn how much pressure they can withstand before breaking, and any little thing could set someone off to explode. This leads me to wonder why, when there are plenty of other sources of stress and frustration around campus, community members would want to add to the disconcerted sentiments. Is there really such a sense of competition or self-involvement that we have forgotten all common courtesy?
Even though at times it may seem like we as individuals are the only ones experiencing this much stress or this tough a curriculum, none of us are alone in this journey through Rensselaer—and who better to understand exactly what RPI students are going through than other RPI students? It is no secret that the majority of students here feel stress quite often, and sometimes this gets the best of people as they become entirely consumed by school work, but there is no excuse for the breakdown in basic human interactions.
While I understand that you are all busy and have bigger things to worry about than my personal mood, there is no excuse for not taking a few seconds to break out of the routine and notice what is happening around you. If you are heading into or out of a building, what are the chances that someone else will also be going through that doorway? All it takes is a quick glance ahead and behind; if you can spare a brief moment, hold the door open for that oncoming person. If it is me, I guarantee that you will have made my day, no matter how many tests are my schedule.
