The campus is teeming with people incapable of making choices and decisions: just like an octopus, they wrap their 8 arms around 8 different things. The only thing that they seem to forget however, is that unlike an octopus, they only have 2 arms, 24 hours and 2,000 calories to accomplish this all. What comes next is an exercise in balancing too many responsibilities and commitments, often with catastrophic results.

If you think that I am mocking or judging the people who do this: I am. But I do not do it without some hypocrisy. As you may have guessed by now, I am also infected. You only have to ask me how calculus went in my first year to find out.

I was/am, like so many students, guilty of overstretching my abilities and myself to the point of a burnout, be it through joining too many activities, scheduling a lot of sport sessions and going to all of my lectures. I mean, who would have thought that there would be so many of them.

This applied for much of my first year and I thought that it would’ve gotten better, but, as my universe grew and I with it, I found more things to do and was presented with more opportunities. I naturally said yes to all of them.

A bad decision, at the time. But eventually after a couple of months of adaptation & intense pressure and even pain (I am a pretty stubborn octopus after all), I would argue that I became a better version of myself. I still do not have the 8 arms of an octopus, but at least I have become a person with the ability to juggle 8 different things.