Personal time

Fear of missing out on personal time

The need to socialize is taking over; the fear of missing out has only increased

As I write this article closer to midnight than I would care to admit, I realize that this will not be an informational piece on “How to Succeed” post-COVID in university. We’re all just continuing to figure it out step-by-step.

The stress of COVID has turned swiftly from “I feel unproductive in quarantine” to “I feel overwhelmed out of quarantine.” I find that, personally, the stress of everyday life is also added onto my academic stress. During quarantine, someone could focus explicitly on chores or other household tasks; now there is pressure to leave the house and become “more productive” with your time. Now, people expect me to leave my house and socialize – which went from taboo to being required a little too fast for me.

“But you’re missing out! Your friends won’t like you anymore!” my anxiety attempts to shout at me as my brain counters with “Just stay home and focus on yourself! You have too much to do!”

While this was an issue in time management pre-COVID, now it seems to have turned into motivation management. I do find myself with a heavier workload, thus creating less opportunities to see friends. However, I also seem to lack the motivation that I once had to go out after a long day. I find myself wanting to curl up for my millionth rewatch of Gilmore Girls instead. This is because, pre-COVID, I was balancing myself between the social, the academic, and the personal in a more equal way. Once COVID hit, I had to emphasize the personal more than ever, as I was left solely in my own company. Once school started up again, I had to emphasize academics even more than usual as online classes require more self-discipline.

While I wouldn’t say “post-COVID,” this world is certainly “post-quarantine” - leading to gatherings of friends, bars reopening, and dates being had. However, I was still used to my 60/40 split between academic and personal time. How was I supposed to add a third variable back in? I’ve been left scrambling to justify experiences to myself while also competing with narratives of “you should be home studying” running through my head. This is not just my experience, but that of many students across the country. Statistics Canada states that “Since COVID, those aged 15 to 24 reported the greatest declines in mental health – 20 percentage point reductions from 60 per cent (2019, pre-COVID) to 40 per cent (July 2020) of those reporting excellent or very good mental health.”

At first, I was very excited to get out and meet new people and see my friends again. However, I still was putting pressure on myself to take care of my home duties and my school duties, all at the same time as I was asked to put extra emphasis on my social life. This, of course, leads to the dreaded word: BURNOUT!

Before someone might have asked me “how many papers did you have due this week?” to evaluate how burnt out I am. Now they could ask “how many social obligations did you fulfill this week?” and garner the same response. One thing that we are always taught in school is to manage your time and make sure that you prioritize. But when society starts to put more emphasis on social lives than you previously did on school, how do you manage?

The key is that, honestly, you don’t. Not every week will look the same, not every friend hangout has to be an entire evening. Fit it in where you can – and if you can’t? Don’t worry about it. It is not your responsibility to be the “fun fulfillment” in other people’s lives. If you need a stress-free night of friends and pizza? Text someone. If you need a night alone to cry and watch sappy Hallmark movies months before Christmas? Cancel on someone.

Don’t feel the need to be more social than you ever have been just because the opportunity has presented itself after a long time. You want to be the person who parties every weekend now that the clubs are open? Go ahead, but don’t have a fear of missing out on experiences just because you missed out on some during quarantine. The opportunities for socialization will keep appearing, they aren’t just limited to your time at university. You never have to feel like you have your life 100 per cent under control; I know I don’t. We’re surviving, hopefully, the end of a pandemic. Cut yourself, and others, some slack.

emily lints contributor

Eliott Reyna via Unsplash The guys have no idea what the girls are laughing at, but they’re going to smile anyways.

Challenges in building student communities online

It’s a difficult task to support the students who have never heard of you

Being a student leader is oftentimes a tricky task to navigate. From interacting with faculty members to supporting students as we all move through different parts of our degrees, there is always something that can be done to help grow the communities present at the university.

To sound wonderfully optimistic, an ideal world where all the events held are successful and each conversation had leads to meaningful relationships being formed, and that the way in which support needs to be facilitated not only for other students but also between the board members is clear and distinct, is a world I wish we could live in.

Now, back to reality and how difficult it is trying to navigate the things that we as student leaders would like to accomplish along with how horrendously tiring it is trying to get the same, or at least similar, results in a completely remote setting.

Some organizations took this time to go through some major changes, whether that was restructuring, updating logos, or changing the focus that they want to take moving forward. But after doing all of that, where do you go from there? You have all these new pretty graphics and fresh ideas for moving forward, and you are stuck trying to reach people through a screen. Not only are you trying to reach them through the screen, but you now have to make them as excited about what you are doing as you are. How many emails are you really willing to send out until you lose your own enthusiasm?

I know you might be thinking “that doesn’t seem as hard as you are making it out to be. People must be wanting to do things.” Trust me, it is difficult to reach them in time before their Zoom battery finally runs out.

One of the biggest hurdles to overcome is being unable to interact and connect with the new students who have started in the last two years. There are first- and second-year students who have never seen campus, let alone heard about the student groups and programs that are available for them to be involved with. This poses a new issue, as we are now drawing from roughly half of the undergraduate student population regarding programming, events, and any media outreach that is done, while trying to determine how to find the other half. Losing out on the opportunity to engage with a large portion of students makes it difficult to feel as though you are doing meaningful work or contributing in a way that is useful and wanted.

Having a smaller audience intensifies the feeling that the work being done is not useful or wanted. With events now needing to be held primarily on Zoom, seeing the participant number in the bottom of the screen can be very disheartening. Everyone is forced to stare at their computer and phone screens for absurd amounts of time, meaning that they do not want to log in to

Wes Hicks via Unsplash Concentrating more on the pets that take over Zoom calls than the people themselves. yet another Zoom call. As well, this Zoom call comes with different expectations – if you are logging into an event on Zoom, there is the expectation that you are more likely to have your camera on and have your microphone on to interact rather than posting in the chat, as it should be “more natural.”

All of this makes it hard for people to want to engage, and as a result makes it increasingly difficult for the boards holding the events to push to continue doing so. Staring at a blank screen with a handful of names and talking to the void is a challenge that can become tiring.

As a result, we have landed in an endless cycle of things being hard to facilitate without feedback, and being unable to get adequate feedback as we are unable to facilitate reaching out to people to start that dialogue. For now, we must continue to move forward in reaching out to people and provide some forgiveness for ourselves if things do not work out as well as we hoped.

It is not an easy time to be a student leader, and it is not an easy time to be a student at all. Looking towards winter, we can be hopeful that connecting with other students will be easier and that the desire to socialize and attend events will continue to rise. Connecting is hard at the best of times – it is even harder now.