I have a propensity for contracting illnesses in inconvenient situations. I’ve had tonsillitis in Prague, influenza in Florida, and most recently, pneumonia in Middletown. The last was by far the least opportune time to be seriously ill – amidst four exams, three papers, and various other odds and ends that had seemed to all converge to a single week.
It started with a fever. Or rather, it started with chills and a piercing headache on a Monday. At first, I was too busy to care, or at least pay attention to my various aches and pains. At some point during a review session for one of my exams, I turned to a friend and asked, “is it cold in here? I’m freezing.” She gave me a concerned look, shaking her head “I think you have a fever”. The second she mentioned that my malaise might be due to an actual sickness, I panicked. With a busy week, a looming weekend bursting with concerts, poetry slams, film screenings, and other events that promised to relieve the stress of exams, the last thing I wanted to do was slow down.
Fever, treated ineffectively over the next few days with Motrin, progressed into a cough, which one night kept me up until five in the morning. A visit to the health center was in order. Upon looking at me for ten minutes, the nurses sent me to the hospital for a chest x-ray. Pneumonia was diagnosed, antibiotics were dispensed, and then the worst part happened: I had to notify my parents. Jewish mother syndrome is a powerful thing, and even more so over a distance of a hundred or so miles. I was instructed not to leave bed. I was called multiple times a day so that my mother could assuage her worry with my voice reassuring her “I’m fine. Really.”
But amidst the chills and frantic parents I found myself oddly contented. I emailed my professors letting them know of my condition and that I would not be attending class or turning in work until I’d recovered, and in the absence of academic and social expectations, I was free for the first time all semester. Doing nothing has never felt so good – when you’re literally incapable of doing anything but relaxing, you find yourself engaged in everything that you brush aside usually. Want to watch an entire season of Law & Order: SVU on Netflix Instant? Want to spend time reading for pleasure rather than the dense philosophical texts you usually have due for your intellectual history class? Want to buy a ridiculously overpriced jug of Odwalla from the campus store to take your medication with? Want to make your friends bring you food from the dining halls so you can have your big excursion for the day – a trip to the kitchen to wash dishes? These are all within your reach as a sick college freshman. And it feels wonderful.
Relaxation is an undervalued luxury, and if being sick was the only way in which I could realize this then the week in which I was bedridden was entirely worth it. You afford yourself moments healthy people regard as immense wastes of time in light of more pressing activities, like listening to the entire Iron & Wine discography while reading Calvin and Hobbes. You begin to realize that it is this time which we take for ourselves that truly defines and maintains who we are. You begin to realize that trying to do everything, however rewarding it may be at times, is exhausting, and sometimes you would do better to call it an early night, or take an hour in between classes to catch up on Gossip Girl, simply to cut yourself a break once in a while. Yes this is a campus full of seemingly indefatigable people who juggle classes, activities, and social lives seemingly fluidly. However, that doesn’t mean, I realized, that I was necessary included in their ranks. My body was trying to teach me what my mind could not accept: when first semester is speeding by so quickly that it almost feels as though you’re missing it, sometimes the answer is to slow down and reevaluate your practices, to take the time for yourself rather than dedicate it to the world. At the end of the day, you’re the one who has to live with yourself.
Penina Yaffa Kessler is a freshman at Wesleyan University. She enjoys being barefoot, fresh fruit, live music, and all the other important things in life. Her column, Fresh Off the Block, appears here on alternating Saturdays.
