Dear reader, I share two things in common with you: 1) I feel like I’ve fallen short of my life’s ends; and 2) my life will end.
I call those the two absolutes: guilt and death (some would say death and taxes, but technically you can get out of paying taxes).
If you’re reading this, then you haven’t yet experienced the second absolute, but I guarantee you’ve experienced and are experiencing guilt.
And with the midterm rush that took place just before Spring Break, I would assume you are rather familiar with the feeling.
It starts like this: your professor nonchalantly informs you and your classmates that you will be having a midterm on such and such a day. Your grade is not quite as high as you want it to be in the class, so you say:
“No more joking around — I’m really going to study for this test.”
At this point, you establish a goal: to get a high grade on the approaching test and decide the best means toward that goal. Which is, of course, studying more.
You have all the resources necessary to reach your goal, including free Academic Skills tutoring, a massive library, excellent technology and time (or at least the ability to cut out other time-consuming activities without threatening your survival. No one has died from Facebook fasting).
Days pass and you find yourself back in your classroom, waiting to take the test. For most of us, the first thought is:
“I should’ve studied more (or studied period).”
You wanted to meet your goal and you were sufficiently equipped to meet your goal, but that next week when the teacher hands back a graded test that’s been slaughtered by red ink, you realize that, once more, you have not met your goal.
So the question is, “If I am able to do what I want to do, why can’t I do what I want to do?”
Psychology and sociology would probably argue that you’re hindered by conflicting interests — that your desire to get a good grade is based on a future prospect of a higher salary, which is easily overridden by the many prospects of immediate gratification that college life offers.
But if my decisions are merely a matter of weighing my conflicting interests (which are, according to many, relative and subjective feelings based entirely on my genetics and my society), why do I feel guilt for choosing MySpace over my grade?
My aim here is not to give a definitive answer to why we don’t study enough, or to justify the behavior, but rather to use our experience with midterms to explore a broader human experience: guilt.
So the next time that murdered midterm stares accusingly up at you, you might ask yourself, “Where’s all this guilt coming from?”