By Jordan Hearne
Reporter
As the semester moves by and midterms approach, it is inevitably that time of year where students are packed in the hallways surrounded by mounds of 15-pound textbooks and enough papers to have wiped out an entire forest.
Of course, it is in these moments that I hear students complain about how many tests they have in one week or whine because they made themselves sick from studying and are trying to catch up on a project. I have one thing to say to these people: shame on you.
If students would take a moment to analyze their situation, they would realize exactly how ungrateful they are being to their professors as well as the university. All that the faculty is trying to do is prepare us for the intense future we have ahead. We should be thanking them for giving us such challenges, and we should appreciate as opportunities those days in which 24 hours are simply not enough.
It is basic logic. In our future careers, it is very apparent that we will never receive the recommended amount of sleep or maintain relatively healthy levels of stress. I’ve learned this through my classes. Baylor is simply trying to condition us to this type of lifestyle. By encouraging involvement in campus activities and student organizations that couldn’t possibly be balanced with studying and classes, the university is only trying to give us a taste of how life will be with a family and a job.
Students, you say you are tired now?
Well in 10 years, you should thank the university for giving you these times of intense misery and mental anguish because knowing you survived this will get you through any crisis.
I also want to take a moment to defend our dear professors. It’s not their fault that all of their tests and projects are colliding with one another. Obviously, the higher-ups at Baylor have forced them to assign as rigorous a schedule as imaginable, and our teachers can’t possibly know that we have demands in other classes to manage besides their own.
Yes, there might be that little gem of a professor that says he or she will be lenient as he or she knows you have other obligations, but in fact, they are doing you a disservice by allowing you free time.
I must commend the university’s attempt at shaping the student body into well-oiled machines that require neither food nor sleep. Their efforts are truly paying off. I have met some remarkable students that have studied for two different tests and completed a six-hour project within 72 straight hours on no sleep. These should be the ones who graduate with honors.
I also have to applaud the university for making every change necessary on campus to ensure our success. The multiple coffee shop locations are quite helpful in beginning the early stages of caffeine addiction. That way, not only are we boosting the economy by spending more money on coffee than groceries, but we are ensuring our bodies’ tolerance of a psychoactive drug that will likely stick with us through most of adulthood.
So students, as you belly-ache to each other that your lives are too busy and you cannot possibly manage to maintain a good GPA without turning to some sort of illegal stimulant, you should be appreciative.
You are being taught the ways of real life, and your spirit, while temporarily broken, will rebuild and take the workforce by storm long before causing any noticeable heart palpitations and side effects.
Therefore, on behalf of the student body drooling over their textbooks, I say thank you.
<emiJordan Hearne is a senior film and digital media major from Garland and is a reporter for the Lariat.
