I am tired. I am worn out. Overworked. Exhausted. I am at the end of my rope. And it does not have to be this way, but Blackburn College and its Work Program did not consider what would be best for its student workers when it, without warning, created a new policy mid-semester regarding make-up hours. Now, rather than be allowed to make up hours in our own departments, students like myself, who are 10 or more hours under, are being forced to make up those hours in “departments of need” like Campus Services (CS) and Dining and Hospitality (Ding).
But our own departments need us. These departments have hired us for our skills, talents and knowledge. When we miss hours, it is our own department that suffers. My failure to work a full 10 hours some weeks at The ‘Burnian doesn’t affect CS or Ding. What has affected CS and Ding are poor management which led to a mass exodus from the departments at the end of last semester.
But more than being unnecessary, this policy is potentially harmful to students, and in my case it is. I have had severe anxiety and depression for most of my life. But with a lot of hard work and the right mix of therapy, medication, coping skills and generally taking care of myself, for most of the past academic year, I have been all but symptom-free. In fact, this fall semester I didn’t cry once except for during movies. Suddenly, this isn’t true anymore. Suddenly, I am panicked and crying at the drop of the hat over things that do not matter because I feel like I cannot cry at the things that do.
One of the most important things I can do to take care of myself is to stay on a consistent schedule and get enough sleep. I had established this for myself, but all of a sudden, I feel like I have been physically knocked off of my course. I have been placed in CS to make up my hours even though I already had an under time contract. Now I need to work every morning at 6 a.m. or 8 a.m., and this is far from the schedule I made for my classes that start at 10 a.m. or 11 a.m.
So to change everything now puts a tremendous amount of stress on me that affects my productivity in my classes and at work. I’m still working my 10 hours at The ‘Burnian (which requires mental energy I barely have right now), taking 14 credit hours and being a part of the Spring musical, which is now in long-running technical rehearsals. And I still need to find time to eat, sleep, try to make it to the gym and at least attempt to take a few deep breaths over the course of the day. This policy has robbed me of my sense of peace, but nobody who made that decision seems to care.