A successful university life is not too different from a good batch of chocolate chip cookies—it’s all about the ratios.
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- ¾ cup packed brown sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
Mix it together, let it cook in the oven, and voila!—a delicious treat conjured from ordinary ingredients.
Similarly:
- 8 hours of sleep
- 2 hours of homework
- 1.5 hours socializing
- 2.5 hours in lectures
- 1.5 hours in labs
- 1 hour in the dining halls
- Going out 1-2 times a week
Once incorporated should—in theory—produce a (somewhat) well-adjusted university student.
Everyone’s recipe for success seems to be working out, but mine has produced a distasteful result: burnout. The feeling tastes all the more bitter because it seems as though everyone else has perfected their sweet equilibrium of studying and fraternizing.
It’s nearly impossible to accurately pinpoint one thing as the sole or primary cause of my misalignment. The rhetoric of “college is a big change for everyone,” while repetitive, rings true. The content itself is not extremely challenging, but a concept that once would have been evenly portioned over a span of a week in a half, is now condensed into a singular 50-minute lecture. Think of a chewy, caramelized on the edges, nicely spread cookie vs. dense, heavy chocolate fudge. Both are tasty, but I could eat a dozen cookies before getting tired, yet my mouth would be aching for water after a square inch of fudge; it’s simply less palatable.
However, I’m not sure I can use that as the reason—after all, isn’t everyone experiencing the same compression of information? Can it be attributed to the fact that my high school didn’t offer IB or AP courses? When talking to my peers who had access to higher level education in high school, I realize that what is brand new to me is only review to them. This has led me to feel that education in Ontario, or in Canada, while ubiquitous and readily available, varies in quality of delivery so much that it almost seems undemocratic. Coming from a town of less than 20,000 residents (many of whom are elderly), the academic resources I had access to were mediocre at best.
I’m not sure this justification holds up either, though, as many students come from rural towns like me, and education in any form is a privilege, not a right. Perhaps it’s all the aforementioned ingredients not being mixed together long enough, or maybe this is just how it is.
Don’t cry over spilt milk, you can still dip your cookies into it.
And it would be unfair to deem my entire university experience thus far a mixture of restlessness and stress, because it hasn’t been. Queen’s, in spite of its academic rigour, is known for its social life; it’s equal parts hustle and bustle. It is the people I have met that are comparable to chocolate chips, pockets of goodness in ordinary life.
Perhaps I misjudged things from the beginning; university is not a recipe, but rather closer to the process of recipe development. And I’ve been following someone else’s recipe instead of tweaking my own. After all, I am adjusting to a new workspace. I still have lots of cookie dough left to bake so there’s nothing to worry about—and doesn’t cookie dough taste better after you let it sit in the fridge for a while anyways?