Surviving Semester Re-Entry Shock

 

Photo Credit: Flaticon

By Sekinat Abdulwakil

Home was really great. It was in fact heaven. You had how many glorious weeks? I hear time loses all relevance in heaven. You slept like a normal human being. You get eight, sometimes more, glorious hours of sleep. You ate really well but, you're a student again.

Transitioning back into the life of a student is not only about the change of location, it's an upheaval of life. One minute you're basking in domestic bliss and the next you're battling with the thoughts of 7am classes and assignments that multiply like locusts. And TDBs? They start to crawl back into your life whispering in that annoying voice “did you miss me?” Your body, now accustomed to peace, is saddled and weighed down by deadlines that won't just chill. Every morning feels like treason against sleep, a betrayal of the paradise you were starting to get used to.

And there are the people. You're sharing a space again with multiple people, especially that roommate who somehow sets fifteen alarms but hears none. You'll discover new talents in patience you didn't sign up for as her billion snoozes drag you into consciousness before you're ready to be up. Group assignments return too, with the usual casts. The group members who think copy and paste is the biggest contribution they could make, the overzealous “dictator” and of course, the ghost.

It's strange, isn't it? A few weeks at home, or was it years? The distortion is real. School feels like a foreign land and you've somehow forgotten all the necessary survival skills. Your brain is sluggish and your lecture rooms look like torture chambers built just for you disguised as a place of learning and your chairs, they have a grudge against you. You're trying to be productive but your soul is back home wrapped up in a blanket halfway through a new Netflix series.

The culinary heights of home cooking fade quickly as you get reacquainted to eating noodles and bread every day. Gone are the home cooked meals, you're back to the economic reality of student life. You do all sorts of mental debates when you need to buy something.

Adjusting is painfully and ridiculously slow. How can you deal with the system, you may wonder? You are asking the wrong question because the system can't be dealt with. They would be the one dealing with you. Know this and know peace. What is the right question to ask then? How do you adapt again?

Oh, it's an arduous task. But don't fear, you'll be in sync soon enough. It will not be today. It may not be this week. You'll soon find yourself skipping breakfast without complaints, staying up at 2am to finish an assignment, laughing at memes about students suffering because they are kind of your reality. Just give it time. Stockholm syndrome is an actual thing.

You'll tell yourself you don't need eight hours of sleep to survive and that you work best under pressure. You'll tell the necessary lies to lubricate your survival.

Remember that the semester will end again. You'll drag yourself home. You'll do nothing but sleep, eat and watch movies again. And when you start to feel human again, another semester will come knocking. The machine is patient. It will always wait for your return.

In case you didn't figure it out yourself, the biggest survival tip is to not resist. Resistance is futile. Submit to your fate.