Last updated: December 10, 2023

“I really need to sleep more.”
“I need some more alone time.”
“I’m always so busy.”

FO·MO
/ˈfōmō/
noun
INFORMAL
Anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere.


University is not like high school. At any moment of the day, there is an opportunity to connect with your peers — you are given total freedom over your choices. But much like Sartre’s “man is condemned to be free”, we are “condemned” to navigate our way through this new environment and develop good habits. It is the first time that we experience true freedom in that we are not bound by the decisions of our parents, but rather our own morality and judgement. And before such tendencies even out, they can manifest in destructive ways.

It is oftentimes I find myself heading home from lectures, tired and ready for a nap, just to be invited to study with friends. I could be idling in my room, maybe having granted myself a 20 minute break for finishing a calc question, and an insidious thought will creep into my mind:

“What is everyone else up to?”

Humans are social creatures by design. Universities are social places by design. Yes, there are dorm-hiders on the extreme end of the spectrum, but sometimes even I envy their ability to block out distractions and live a meaningful life, whatever that means for them.

For the rest of us, its about acheiving a balance. Yes, the academically rigorous program is academically rigorous, but there’s no way I would get by without some fun every once in a while. It’s when that “every once in a while” becomes “every day” becomes “every day and night” is when I start realizing that there’s a problem.

Why does free will lead to bad habits? Simply because it’s a slippery slope that is easy to fall into. The line of thinking “we’ll just stay out for another hour” turns into two, then maybe three, and it’s justified due to the fact that it was a good experience. There is pressure to meet up with people that you’ve just gotten to know, to strengthen your relationship with them, to feel like a part of the group, because otherwise, the irrational fear that one may be removed from the group simply for missing an opportunity to hang out manifests as a nagging thought in the back of the mind.

To develop good habits is quite the opposite. It takes great mental fortitude to say to your friends that you rather spend the night alone, to trust the people around you to hold the belief that friendship means more than countless hours fooling around in the middle of the night, and sacrificing many potential memories made from this process.

And it is through the countless nights of late returns that I find myself questioning the fact that I’ve had limited time to self-reflect. Why do “showerthoughts” exist? Well it’s the critical time of the day when the internet is out of reach, a time when you are finally alone with your thoughts, and have nothing to do but to process them. It’s a time when free dopamine does not exist, and one can take great pleasure in figuring out complex thoughts built up over the course of days or weeks.

They say that university is a time to discover your passions and who you are as a person. They didn’t tell us the fine print said “some discipline required”.