The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

Ask Alice

By Alice Anigacz

Q: I am so overburdened with work. I stay up late studying so often that sometimes I oversleep and don’t even make it to the classes that I’m studying so hard for. Help!
A: The first thing you want to do is drop a class. You only need to be taking three classes to be officially enrolled as a full-time student at Macalester, so slack off a bit for now. You can even take just three classes each semester. This is not to say that this decision won’t come back to haunt you a few semesters down the line when you need to get those credits to graduate. Then you just have to get your parents to shell out several thousand dollars for your extra years at Mac. Take out some loans if they get fed up with you. If you’re lucky enough to have your slacker attitude carry into the business world, you may experience the joys of having lenders breathing down your neck for decades as you fail to pay off your loans because you simply don’t like to work that hard.

Another option is to further burden yourself by making a few appointments with the counselors at Winton Health Services. Give up a few hours a week and you’ll learn some relaxation techniques that will hopefully work when you decide to pull the plug because of all of your stress.

If you prefer freeing up your time over making your days even fuller, your best bet is probably to drop some extra-curricular activities. You’ll have more time to focus on your studies and get good grades. Of course though, everybody gets good grades; so when it comes time to apply to graduate schools and you need to differentiate yourself from everybody else, you probably won’t be able to. Looking like the regular Joe with no interests, you probably won’t get accepted by any graduate schools.

Moral of the story: pick up some classes that you don’t really have to attend to do well in. This way you can sleep in, study, go take the tests, keep your extra-curricular activities, go on to graduate school, and have a good career. Downside: your career choices may be limited if you can only go to huge lecture classes where your absence won’t be noticed. Have fun being a professor of everything introductory!

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