As part of a campus community, staying in tune with the happenings of the world is an inevitable habit. With so much discussion, awareness of current issues sometimes seems to happen through osmosis.
It’s part of the reason college exists, to encourage discourse and worldliness, collaboration and communication across different backgrounds and cultures. It’s one of the great things about being a student.
Unfortunately, the world spins too fast to keep track of everything in it.
Certain events have the power to divert the energy and attention normally put into sustaining the definitive cultural atmosphere of campus. Of course, “certain things” really means midterms, the soul-sucking demonic exams that determine exactly how stressful life is for the rest of the semester.
Still, with summer not too far in the past, those recent memories seem like a better time, when life was at ease and no troubles existed in the world. The fact that it isn’t true anymore doesn’t matter, because now what feels like every spare moment — from the morning shower to late nights in the UGLi — is spent obsessing over material we don’t know. Yet we march on.
Most people can at least empathize. Parents, and even occasionally professors who choose to show their human side, acknowledge that midterms are the first of many stressful times in a new academic year, and even if the college scene looks pretty familiar by now, there are always new challenges.
It’s a conglomeration of the known and unknown that causes so much stress. It’s why on some days the thought of real adulthood and never having to go to lecture again seems like the most beautiful thing in the world.
Fall is finally here, but it doesn’t quite feel like it. Maybe it’s still too warm to feel the refreshing cut of cold in the air, or maybe our football team is too bad to get properly excited about a Saturday. Whatever the reason, it’s almost too easy to slip into a bad mood and forget what we do know — to stop appreciating what it is about the day-to-day that defines college.
There used to be an energy that the air almost hummed with. It’s not always the same for everyone, but recently it’s been universally quieted by the whirlwind of another semester gearing up to pace.
It’s depressing to acknowledge that this time around just doesn’t feel the same. Somehow life has gotten more stressful, and the tried and true benchmarks of good times past now seem shallow and unfulfilling.
It was the conglomeration of the known and unknown that comprised the feeling in the first place, and now it all feels old and tired.
However, that isn’t to say that all hope is lost. At some point that exciting energy will show itself again. It makes some people dance like their friends have never seen, and others smile so wide it hurts — an anxious excitement that nobody knows how to verbalize.
There will be a known functional recipe to elicit it. But when it’s recognized, the greatest epiphany that privileged kids away at school can have should strike. The energy wasn’t somehow built into the masonry of the campus and the city, and it doesn’t leak out from backyard speakers and brass marching horns. It is here because we are here, and it’s the things we think we hate that brew it.
The feeling is community; it is Michigan. We came after we felt it first from those who were here before, and we were met with academic demands that we were told give this school its relevance and prestige.
Even though we knew what we were signing up for, we came to be among the best, and we all came to stay. The doubt and challenge of it that can quell the energy, but only for a while. Soon enough this stressful time too shall pass, and somehow we’ll have all survived, proving to ourselves once again why we deserve to stay here, and be champions.
Tyler Scott can be reached at tylscott@umich.edu.