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n editor’s attempt at comedy through a hopefully humorous discussion of academic paralysis.

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Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize in advance for disturbing your sensibilities. This article is my first jump into comedy, and I most likely have bungled it. Nevertheless, I hope you will deign to read the following 1026 words with minimal irritation.

As I write this in the week right after reading week, I am left with an immense amount of regret, guilt and despair as I realize that absolutely nothing has changed in the situation vis-à-vis the colossal workload I have.

Like all students, I idealized that I would fix all my backlog this reading week and be on top of things. And, like a majority of them, I realize that I did not make a single dent and whiled my time away. Instead of feeling refreshed and recharged by the break, I find myself drained, realizing that if I don’t get my act together, my semester will be ending tragically once again.

Already, my flesh and blood have lost hope in the situation. After the last nine “I’ll fix everything this week”s and “I will figure it out somehow”s, the phrases seem to have diminishing returns in assuaging my parents about their son’s academic future. Like well-meaning, well wishing debtors to a dastardly creditor, they try to motivate and push me towards being better. And, as any penniless creditor, I run away, going deeper and deeper into the hole.

The psychology of the situation is quite interesting. Logically, I know that I have a lot of work to complete. In fact, it’s the only thing that’s on my mind—just like a persistent fly that keeps buzzing around your ear, zipping about your room, too fast to kill with a rolled-up The Medium newspaper—my gargantuan backlog plagues me day and night.

Yet, amidst this titanic deluge of responsibilities, I oddly do not feel like doing anything at all. Instead, I escape towards binge-watching YouTube videos and reading entire manhwas (South Korean comics). Occasionally, during the binging stupor, I have a moment of clarity: should I really be doing this? Is this really what I should be up to? Despite this nagging thought and the very tangible reality that beckons to me, I can’t tear myself away.

At this point, you may blame the algorithm—and perhaps it shares some blame. But there is also a fault in my no-good persistence. In a flash of clarity, I changed my YouTube settings to limit the number of videos I see on my feed. I don’t see any YouTube Shorts at all. And after one video, it only shows three other videos I can watch next rather than the previously infinite number. 

However, I still find myself bingeing YouTube with these changes. Do you have any idea how hard it is to binge YouTube when you only have three videos showing up after the first one? It requires a laborious amount of misguided effort—which is unfortunately one of my defining traits.

It even permeates my sleep. Now, I open my eyes and realize that I don’t want to do anything at all. I wake up, knowing that I have responsibilities, then I turn around and go back to sleep. My endless tasks nag at me to make something of myself, while my bed is suddenly covered in superglue, never letting me get out of bed.

It’s getting to the point that it’s rather embarrassing to admit—how do you really tell people that you wake up and don’t feel like doing anything? That you just don’t want to function and don’t want to participate in society or university? 

But feeling that way changes nothing. Whether I want to do things or not, I have to do something every day. That is the basic principle of living. Whether I like it or not, time and university classes only move forward, like an unstoppable freight train.

I feel like a university semester is a 12-round boxing match. Each round, the semester throws a new technique like an assignment, a group project or an interminable term test at me. Somewhere around round four, the semester duplicates itself and throws them at me all at the same time. But I never learned the Shadow Clone Jutsu (a clone technique from the anime series Naruto), so I have to tank my responsibilities. The main problem is, I stumbled in round two and never quite recovered. So, all this time I’ve been taking the hits, but I can’t give a single solid hit back. And somehow I need to weather the storm until it’s all done.

Of course, puritans will say to learn from a masochist and enjoy each combination, to have fun learning the content of each course. And, perhaps as a rare twist of fate for a student, I find myself to be quite masochistic—I like learning new things and interesting concepts from my lecture. But now I feel like I don’t have time for those small moments of enjoyment. I am six rounds behind, beaten up black and blue and I’m on the brink of tapping out. 

After a single misstep, I just can’t keep pace. I’m out of breath, desperately trying to catch up, yet never quite keeping pace. The small steps that I take only highlight how much further I need to go—for every step I take, the track seems to grow by ten.

The only thing I can do is ask myself, “How far can I go today? How many steps further can I take from yesterday?” and “Am I going to run away today?” I’m hoping that this week I can give myself a positive response to those questions.

With that, my first comedy piece that devolved into something entirely different towards the end has concluded. I’m not sure how well I did in the comedy department; hopefully, some of you at least smiled reading this. But at the very least, I got to unload some personal baggage on my back, which means the hour I spent writing this was quite fruitful. 

If you enjoyed this piece, and would like to see future entries by other writers or me retelling the sordid depressing details of their university life in an attempt at comedy, please email features@themedium.ca with your loving praise. Your kind words will be greatly appreciated in the cesspit of negativity that we writers tend to dwell in. 

With that, yours faithfully and truly,

Madhav Ajayamohan

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