Sickness in college
Posted by | Posted in Living independently, Personal life | Posted on 09-25-2009
Top reasons why getting sick in college is a terrible thing:
- You completely lose any and all sense of proper English grammar (as exhibited by this post).
- Some of your professors do not allow extensions on problem sets even if you’re on your deathbed with fever (I’m looking at you, 18.03 p-set #3!)
- It’s hard to fully grasp what questions you’re being asked at a 6.02 lab checkoff (“What do you MEAN by, ‘Why does my code look like this?’ I just coded it according to specs!”)
- It’s always chilly and cold. Even when it’s really 80′F outside and sunny.
- You wake up under three layers of blankets, sweaty and disgusting.
- Your sense of hearing drops so much you can barely hear what the lecturer is saying.
- It feels like a block of metal is lodged in your throat, which means the only things you can eat are soup, soup, and more soup.
- MIT Medical and Student Support Services are completely unreliable in getting sick notes written in a timely manner.
- There’s most likely a test in some subject in the following week that you don’t fully understand and need to relearn (I’m still looking at you, 18.03!)
Top reasons why getting sick in college isn’t such a bad thing:
- Some of your professors understand that a psuedo-epidemic of the flu is going around, and are kind enough to remove late penalties (Thank you, Profs. Terman and Rappaport!)
- You have friends who bring you care packages (Yuri, my awesome AXO Mystagogue), walk you through the homework even though you’re way too sick to fully comprehend (Jason), bring you thermometers and eucalyptus cough drops (Shankari), offer their help if you need anything from CVS or food (Minh, Sam, and various others).
- You have reliable members of your team who are willing to step in and help out until you’re back up and running again (Marie’s running MITADT rehearsal for me today – thank you!)
- You stop stressing over little things (like whether it’s better to use horizontal- or vertical-ruled planners) and realize how silly your life seemed before health was the main priority.