November 8, 2021

There’s nothing quite like waking up in your own bed after a full month and a half away at college. There’s also nothing like having a midterm the day after break. Yep, that’s right! The fall break that was supposed to be consumed by binge watching new TV shows, going out for every meal, or basking in the sun one last time before it’s cold until April, now held an academic obligation on me. 

Fall break was conflicting for myself and many others. Was it a break, or designated study days? Many professors took the liberty of scheduling midterms the following week, which meant that it was perhaps not as relaxing as I’d initially intended. It became difficult to feel present with my friends and family with the thought of my upcoming political science midterm staring at me every time I closed my eyes. I also desperately needed to study and simultaneously wanted to maximize my time with my relatives. 

In this instance, it would be hard to adequately accomplish both my goals of academic success and maintaining strong relationships. Ultimately, I made the decision to devote time to my family. I have every day until the end of the semester to do homework and study in the library, but how often do I truly have more than a few hours to see my friends and family outside of FaceTime. Being in the car for the first time with my cousin who just learned to drive pushed me to acknowledge all the milestones I was missing in my family's lives. Watching my 15 year old cousin, Lily, navigate busy roads and try to park in an overcrowded parking lot allowed me to concede my notion on forcing homework over family time. 

Catching up with my cousins, going for a drive with my aunt, facetiming old friends from high school, and cooking dinner with my grandma are not things I would trade for anything, even a higher grade on my exam. Maintaining a meaningful relationship is not something that can be quantified by a number, but is something that you feel in your heart. I know I made the right decision. 

Making the decision to spend quality time with loved ones was not an easy one to make. I value academic success highly, and if you had asked me a year ago, I probably would have spent my break hunched over my laptop typing out a review sheet, seeing my family just for dinner. But I am realizing that life is full of tradeoffs, and it is okay to make the choice to devote time to sustaining meaningful relationships rather than solely focusing on academic achievement. There’s no GPA a for happiness and no matter how long I study for my political science exam won’t take away the fact that sometimes academics can’t come first. It’s time to stop feeling guilty for not piling on hours of work during breaks because sustaining meaningful relationships is just as important as academic success. I would be nowhere without my family, and sometimes it’s better to be thankful for what you have now rather than what you’re trying to achieve. 

I feel closer to my family than I did before fall break, and I attribute that to the time I freely was able to spend with them. Rather than experiencing academic burnout and resentment, I returned to campus with new energy to take on my course load, excited to continue learning. At the end of the day, we all have to make decisions that aren’t as subjective as whether to do homework or not. But from this, I know that going forward, there are no wrong or hard decisions: I'm going to choose whatever fills my heart the most. Because that’s what life is all about, giving and taking - sometimes you just need to give a little to take a lot.