There's an Overload Making Me Miserable

Tell me if this has ever happened to you: you have a day where everything is going wrong. Your English teacher just assigned a paper way too long, you have an ECON test tomorrow that you aren’t nearly prepared for, you want to go to the gym but you don’t have time, and that cute girl in your Art History class isn’t responding to your texts. You stare at the wall and scream “WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME?!” Did all of your professors have a meeting deciding to make your week excessively difficult? Did you accidentally drunk-email everyone in your life explaining how much you love being stressed out?

And just when you’ve driven your closest friends mad from ranting on and on about how things keep going “wrong” in your life, you find yourself listening to 2000s throwback music way too often just to remind yourself of the “good ole days” when your biggest decision was what to watch on Nickelodeon after school. Nowadays, you’re responsible for everything. Making friends, finding that special someone, choosing you’re meals, doing your laundry, staying in shape, and deciding if it’s a good idea to go to WakeWednesday (spoiler alert: it’s not, but you’ll still do it anyway).

Friends, I’m going to clue you in to something that I have discovered through late-night conversations with my roommate. But first, let me explain how this idea came about. It all began the first weekend of school when we realized that every time one of us tried to go to sleep, we would be abruptly awakened at 3am by some form of loud noise. One night it was a fire alarm, the next it was people playing soccer in the hall, and another it was people (probably the same ones) yelling and banging on doors (they were probably not sober…).

That third night, some point after midnight, my roommate looked at me and exclaimed, “There must be an overlord above us that just hates us and doesn’t want us to sleep.” Unsure of why else a college student might be sleep deprived, I agreed that this mystical being must be the sole reason for our wakefulness.

But then other things started happening. We began to realize that all of our tests were scheduled on the same day. He was constantly fighting with his significant other, I was still searching for one and getting shot down, and one night we sadly discovered that for some completely obscure reason, the pit stops serving food at 8pm.

As I’m approaching my first college tests (as are many students) I’m beginning to accept the presence of this unknown antagonist. Oh, I have a truck-load of work due tomorrow? Overlord. I keep getting sick? Overlord. But there’s a very simple way that I have learned to deal with a seemingly insurmountable amount of stuff going wrong.

It’s a two-step process. Step one is to look up to the sky and extend your middle finger. You can yell, curse, cry, anything you want to do at this overlord. Remember: it hates you. Show no mercy. The second step is to take a deep breath and think of five things going right in your life at that exact moment. It could be how you finally understood something your professor said. Or it could be how the person walking in front of you held the door so it didn’t bop you in the noggin (seriously people, don’t let this happen, otherwise you might as well be the overlord). If you can’t think of five, think of the small, minute details. Maybe it’s the way the trees provide enough shade to make the weather more bearable. Maybe it’s how your shoes are perfectly tied. And if you still can’t think of five positive things, look up to the sky, take a deep breath, and try again.