Clarissa Tan
This weekend, thousands of drunken college students will flood into the town of Isla Vista, California. You’ve probably heard of it, whispered in airports between freshly spray-tanned sorority sisters or mentioned in the search bar of a TikTok comment section that you didn’t understand: Deltopia. I had a friend and fellow writer who attended the raucous celebration last year. He returned with tales of debauchery and madness, crushing walls of flesh under strobing lights, pounding bass and a personal essay written in the drug-addled style of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”
I’ll admit it: Yale isn’t going to give me the material for a Thompson-style journey. While my West Coast counterparts are Ubering to get wasted on the beach, I’m boring holes through my copy of Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” and wondering how I can reasonably finish all this work. If it’s a lucky weekend, I’m taking the train down to Brooklyn for a gallery opening — the dress code on Evite listed as “vintage” and “eclectic.” It’s not that I don’t appreciate talking about oil painting fetish art or John Waters’ more esoteric films while a twenty-something accompanies her spoken word poetry with strumming on her banjo. I do, probably more than I should. But sometimes, life here drives me crazy.
Until three weeks ago, I prided myself on being entirely unfamiliar with academic burnout. High school was something I barrelled through like a Vin Diesel stunt double in a “Fast & Furious” sequel. My schedule was defined entirely by my own will, no color-coded assignments or scheduled mealtimes or the everpresent 400 pages of Directed Studies readings that ate up my spare hours. Sure, on campus there are no parents to peek over your shoulder and watch your every move, but it didn’t feel like I was totally wild and free in the way that televangelists from the 70s made me hope college would be. It took the coldest weeks of February to trigger my first and final academic burnout.
My friend Abby — a prospective physiological sciences major at UCLA — spent her Wednesday afternoon driving to Chipotle, grabbing a burrito with extra guac and parking at the beach so she could call and tell me she was done with work for the week. On a Wednesday. It’s not like she had less work than me, usually. Her rare off week had just happened to be the week my body had given out and I’d thrown Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France” at the wall. I was happy for her, so happy that I had to clench my teeth, leave my dorm, romp through the snow-turned-slush and buy a cupcake from the closest restaurant. The vegan cafe. I didn’t mention that the nearest Chipotle had a rat infestation and closed just before New England winter began.
I turned bitter. Fast. I complained and whined in my journal about how much I had to do before the day was done:
“There’s dirt under my nails. My readings aren’t done. The buttery is closed.”
It’d been weeks since I’d danced, weeks since any actual party had been executed, weeks since I’d been able to melt into the couch and turn into immobile human sludge. I was a whiny and petulant college student and I didn’t feel free. My daydreams consisted of road trips and Forrest Gump marathon walks across the country — anything to escape the Ivy League college I’d been so privileged to attend.
It took a reread of my journal — and the first glimmer of spring — to realize I was being ridiculous. Yeah, it sucks to be cooped up indoors when it’s 21 degrees out, but I’d rather be indoors than frozen solid. The anvil of work on my back doesn’t feel great, but I wouldn’t trade my education for anything.
Based on my flooded Instagram home page and the Yale Class of ’28 account — turned Yale Class of ’29 — Ivy Day has come. I’m sure there are at least one or two prospective students scrolling through the YDN, trying to get a glimpse at what they’d be like if they decided to come here. If they’re at all like me, picking their nails in their high school bedroom, they’re probably worried about the workload. And college parties.
I can’t promise that you’ll handle it with grace, but I will promise that you’ll make it through your first semester here. You’ll moan, you’ll complain, you’ll skip a few readings and flop out of a few extracurricular commitments, but you’ll make it out the other side with enough energy to complain and act more than a little brattish. I know I did. We might not have Deltopia — sad, I know — but there’ll be more than enough parties. Just like my West Coast friends, I too was faced with the classic college question: go to the a capella frat the night before your essay is due at 11am, or stay in to finish said essay? You’ll make the wrong choice and enjoy it, too.
If you’re scared of the work it takes to attend Yale University, don’t be. Or just don’t take Directed Studies.