“D is my egg,” my roommate Hollee said as she held up a piece of fried egg with her chopsticks. I could feel my eyes starting to water from laughing so hard as I snapped her photo on Snapchat and typed out that quote as the caption.
It was midnight, and we were sitting at the kitchen table, stress eating a huge bowl of ramen. After talking about the long lists of things each of us had to do, we decided to just make food instead. What made it even more fun was that both of us were so stressed and deliriously sleepy that everything we said was funny. My stomach hurt from laughing so much.
I love times like these that remind me how lucky I am to have someone who is always willing to cook noodles with me in an attempt to avoid all responsibilities.
In the middle of writing this column, I took a break and went to Midnight Oil with my friend Delilah, the assistant copy editor for The Bison. While driving back, we talked about how beautiful the Christmas lights looked. Delilah will be graduating in May, so she said that the lights are one of the things she is really going to miss when she leaves Harding, but they’re not the only thing she’ll miss.
Delilah pointed out that this might be the only time and place in her life where she’s constantly surrounded by friends (or friendly faces at the least). Harding is such a community-oriented place — it allows people to strike up a conversation with pretty much anyone at any time. It’s a contained environment that functions kind of like its own little town, and all the different departments and majors make it easy for everyone to have their own thing. I bet it would be easy to find a group of friends in the caf that each have a different hometown and career plan after graduation. Yes, you can make friends with people within your major, but it’s also easy to meet people with diverse interests and opinions.
I hadn’t thought of this aspect of Harding before, but after Delilah pointed that out, I realized how amazing it is. Hollee and I have different majors, we’re from different towns, and we plan to live in different states after graduation. Despite this, we also plan to stay friends. If it weren’t for the director of resident life randomly placing us in the same dorm sophomore year, we wouldn’t be eating ramen at midnight and laughing so hard that it hurts.
Even though I was stressed out about finishing these opinion pages and editing the Twitter graphic before curfew, I really enjoyed my conversation with Delilah. It was nice to take a moment to enjoy a cup of coffee and a good conversation with my friend, and to forget about that stress.
So now dead week is coming to an end, finals are about to start, and I am so stressed I can barely think straight. But that’s okay. I know I have friends who will laugh and eat ramen or get coffee with me and just step away from that stress for a little while. Those moments are going to be what I remember and miss most when I finally make it through all the finals anyway.
I know that my future depends on whether or not I pass these classes, but I also know I won’t do well on the tests if I’m tired and stressed.
So, take a moment with your friends and realize how lucky you are to have them in your life. They’re probably just as stressed as you are. Maybe it will benefit you both to take a short break before diving back into your studies. Yes, grades are important, but so is your sanity and health.
