In high school I remember thinking that my life would be a lot easier if I just didn’t have to sleep. I hardly did as it was, and really felt that when I did make the time for it, or to do anything just for fun I was wasting my time and should have been doing something “important” instead.

I got to college and things weren’t very different. While I now realize that my expectation to be a completely different person didn’t make much sense, at the time I was surprised at how little my life had changed.

I mean, I’d promised myself that all my hard work was to get into college. I had this nice little idea in my head throughout all the 2 AM flashcard flipping that when I got to college I’d just be sitting by the nice pools all day, glad that I didn’t have to stress out anymore.

But that was really unrealistic. Now that I’ve had these new challenges, I’ve realized that there’s not going to be a point in my life where there’s the deadlines just disappear and I don’t have anything else to strive for.

Even My Art in High School Was about HomeworkAnyways, there’s a few options for people who end up in this situation. You can totally give up, maybe switch your major to something easier and try to avoid the work for a little while, although anything else you do is going to have its own set of challenges as well eventually. Alternatively, you can find a way to deal with it in a way that doesn’t destroy you.

For me, sticking with computer science actually made learning to accept the challenges I’ve been faced with easier. CS teaches you how to break big problems down into small steps, and that’s exactly the approach you need to take when you’re trying to accomplish something too overwhelming to convince yourself you’re going to do.

But there are some key differences between your life and a program that are important to recognize. Most importantly, you don’t need to focus on efficiency as much. In fact, you should purposely be inefficient sometimes, just to remind yourself that you’re not a computer but an actual human being with more than just a set of goals to accomplish.

For example, this semester I’ve been taking a tennis class that hasn’t helped me to get a job or write prettier code or get into grad school or anything. It’s literally just helped me to be a little bit more coordinated and meet people who don’t code. But most importantly, it reminds me that I get to have fun sometimes too and helps me to appreciate the work I do get to do, because I actually like it in moderation.

Anyways, I know that a lot of people who are going through similar things right now. My advice is just to keep working on the little stuff right in front of you, and when you’ve done enough of it (yes, it is possible to do enough work) go do something else. There’s only so much we’re humanly capable of, and that’s perfectly okay.


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