Part-time intern, full-time college student: Why am I doing this to myself?

I promise I’m not usually this preppy.

I do feel a little bit ridiculous: white, button-down shirt; dark gray business pants; blue-white sweater; gray pea-coat jacket. Nearly everything except my jacket and ballet flats are J. Crew. Admittedly it’s not that bad. Having being raised in Catholic-school with collared shirts, plaid skirts, and black shoes, I never feel over-dressed for class anymore but I do feel extra–especially while sitting in a college anthropology class with classmates in sweatpants and cute crop-tops.

But as soon as this class ends, I’ll be running down the subway, taking the 1 line, switching to 2 or 3 line at 96th St, run to the next station over, switching again to the S line at Times Square, and stepping off at Grand Central Station, and running to the building where I have my internship three times a week. I have 25 minutes to pull it off. Let’s go.

Being a full-time college student doesn’t just mean showing up for class; it’s also homework, sorority meetings, exercise, laundry, writing for the college magazine. Being a part-time intern doesn’t just mean handling coffee orders and copy-editing; it’s pitching stories, staying in touch with the news cycle, doing research outside of your office hours, writing, and reading. Don’t get me wrong, I love being a college student. I enjoy the academic life–the lectures, discussions, research, the people you meet. But I came here to New York this semester to do work, gain experience, do an internship. Both of these are too important to me to let go, so I make it work.

I take it moment-by-moment, day-by-day.

We are constantly told to stop, contemplate our life, smell the roses, examine our path, and enjoy the breaks in life. But I cannot help but imagine that to pause would mean to stop, that examining the path I’ve gone down so far will only take me back to a junction where I would look across at the parallel path of a different road: a path where a piece of mail might have arrived on time and I might have stayed in college the first time, where I might have different friends, joined a different sorority, faced different struggles, pursued a different major, had less scars, lived a different life. Moreover, I suspect that if I saw that, I wouldn’t be able to look away. I can’t afford that luxury. It’s too tempting to turn my eyes and see that reflection and too easy to stop. So I put on my own blinders, keep my eyes ahead, focused on the next target, the next goal, and just keep moving.

There simply aren’t enough hours in a day to do college and work, eat, sleep, shower, socialize, and self-care. It feels impossible. Still, maybe I can do it, at least for now? I promise it’s not just some twisted sense of self-esteem and narcissistic self-perception of my own capabilities.

I know it’s not a renewable way of living; I can’t keep this up in the long-term. But weirdly enough, even to my own confusion, I am capable of doing this for now. I take it as it comes: one homework assignment, then another, then a blog post, make tea for self-care, then do homework reading, prepare questions for a TA meeting, and do the second part of reading. For now at least, there is a tinge of pride at the end of my tired eyes. In burning the candle at both ends, there is a sort of sadistic pleasure in the warmth and light I can create. I’m building my resume, I’m writing for a magazine, I’m in college. I am on fire. But how long can I realistically keep this up?

It’s Friday. College tries to schedule none or fewer classes on Fridays, so I have no classes today and the rest of my friends are sleeping in. It’s 7am and I slip out of bed before it’s bright. I shed my pajamas from the night before like skin and cover myself in a grey robe. I shuffle off the showers and return to the clothes I set out the night before, chilly and cold against the skin. Button down shirt, grey sweater, black pants, black boots, scarf, snow jacket. I pick up breakfast. Today, the subway might run slower so I try to get a head start. I work until 1pm and then I eat lunch at Grand Central Station.

A woman in the dining area cusses me out because I don’t have cash to give her nor will I use my credit card as she suggests. I don’t have a credit card. I only carry enough cash for my taxi later tonight. I walk back to work.

After work, I take a different subway route–this time to the Metropolitan Museum. I have a paper to write for linguistics so I spend the next two hours–not look at the art, but watching parents scold their children, couples teasing each other, high schoolers snickering at nude statues, and people trying to make some understanding of the art in front of them. I watch how people don’t face each other when talking, and how they move about in the space of the museum. I honestly don’t know how I am going to write this paper.

I take a taxi back to the dorm that night. Later, I FaceTime with college friends across the country. I start studying for my test on Monday. I go to sleep around 4am.

Recently, my sleep cycle has been thrown off. I fall asleep after work, sleeping at 7pm and waking up at 10pm. I finally go to bed again around 4:30am, then wake up at 8:00am for class. There are days I spend fighting off sleep during my afternoon classes and there are nights I spend lying in bed, fighting off onslaught of thoughts that drive me awake. I get through the day in these steps, by the moments, ploughing ahead so I don’t have time to look back or to the side. At some point I will have to reassess, and find a new way of living. But for now, I need to sleep.

Or maybe I just need to start drinking coffee again.