<ir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-8de69274-30a4-5e14-4391-dc0684bb3582">Hello friends. It’s eighth week and the final push towards winter freedom is upon us. Some of us are headed towards fun vacations, externships, jobs, or just time at home. Every year we wonder if we’ll make it and every year we do. Each term cycles through as if following some sort of script: fresh excitement, the slow dawning of over commitment, the desperate struggle, the exhausted crawl, the soul-searching and then the miraculous push through finals. Then we must forget it all happened so we can convince ourselves to do it again.
How do we convince ourselves to return term after term, putting ourselves through overloading, all 300-level classes, participating in literally every club, and working not only an on-campus job but an off-campus one? My current working theory is that they put something in the water. Or maybe they have some sort of screening on Carleton applications where they look for people with some sort of super-human stamina or academic-masochism. Aside from these innate inner-qualities though, how does one survive at Carleton, especially in the final tsunami of stress? We all have different ways of coping, but here are a few methods that are worth a shot.
Become a Plant Parent. This may seem like just added responsibility, but there is some comfort to be found in keeping something other than yourself alive. You can name them, talk to them, and if you get an air-cleaning plant, it pays you back in nice fresh air. I would recommend a snake plant or a ZZ plant – both don’t need too much sun and are extremely hard to kill. ZZ plants have actually been around since the dinosaurs. If the dinosaurs or millions of years of evolution couldn’t kill these plants, you can’t either.
Dedicate an hour of your day to lying on the floor. Do it somewhere with sunshine streaming in. Lie on the floor. Become one with the floor. Floors don’t have problems.
Leave encouraging notes for people in their mailboxes. Taking your mind off your own problems and bringing a bit of joy to someone else’s day can be just what you need. Bonus points for doodles of dinosaurs.
Grab a friend and become blanket burritos.
Learn how to see the future. Read tarot cards, cast Runes, look at tea leaves. The future is a scary place. Even if you don’t believe in tarot cards etc., it is still fun to try and figure out their meanings and play around with them. Maybe your subconscious will give you some much-needed affirmation.
Look at how chubby the squirrels are getting. Fall is the best because you suddenly get chubby squirrels rolling around as they get ready for winter. A chubby squirrel is a happy squirrel because it is going to survive the next year, just like you.