tired mumblings

Recently I've been struggling with balancing my work load at university with my personal life, work and everyday tasks. I've often bemoaned about how everthing is so much harder than in high school and I'm frequently worried about my role in the future as a functioning member of society.

It is hard. The work is hard. There is never a right or wrong answer in law, and there is only an occasional yes or no in psychology based on what we've proven or disproven. Statistics is a bunch of maybes and 95% sure's.

It's only going to get harder. A lawyer or a psychologist, someone who fixes other problems. There's no textbook with the answers in the back, and you have to use your own reasoning to help as best as you can. You have to force yourself to think.

It's so easy not to think. It's so easy to be pulled along by the next high or low that strikes you. Love, drugs, trying to earn money, having fun and vegging out are all really easy to do. And if the tasks are enjoyable you want to do them more. It's human nature.

But tertiary students who are challenged and required to think and process large amounts of information, try and fit it into how their own logic works, and try and apply that to the world around them have a responsibility to use their intelligence.

We're the next generation. We have almost everything at our fingertips: information, basic needs, luxuries and many things that money can't buy. But we can and we have to make things better, for not just ourselves, but for the people we care about, for the people they care about , for the people who need our help. Because we're all human and I believe that all humans have a chance to develop and become a much better, kinder species if only the people we're educating use their brains and decide that being open, tolerant, well informed, fair and balanced is what's right.

Basically, I'm so tired right now. I'm not trying my best to do my best and sometimes I fall back and do things that are really easy because I don't have to think. But I know that's wrong and something has to change. I don't want to be the person who half asses their way through their education and becomes the not fully competent professional because I won't be any good to anyone. I don't want any student to half ass it through their education either because that stunts human growth.

I understand that development doesn't hinge entirely on academic success, and that students should be actively involved in what they have a strong interest and passion for, whether that be the performing arts, the environment, history, recreational sports and the like. But there needs to be a balance. The more knowledge we have, the more empowered students are. I believe this. We might be idealistic youths but I really believe that our generation will be the generation that changes the world for the better.