Where have all the good times gone?

Allowing yourself to survive reading week

Another reading week has passed us by. As someone staring at the imminent end of their BA (or the realization that this end isn’t as imminent as it perhaps ought to be), I’ve been given the gift of hindsight this year. Think of me as a modern-day Scrooge hoarding what little insight I’ve earned—but since the holidays are fast approaching, let me describe my reading weeks as a veritable procession of Dickensian spirits. 

On a Sunday—the last day of this fall’s reading week—the Ghost of Reading Weeks Past knocked on my bedroom door. They whispered reminders of how my previous reading weeks went down. Two years ago, I was a commuting part-time student, trying to juggle schoolwork for a major I didn’t care for and the actual work that allowed me to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach. Reading week is a blessing in disguise, I thought. Think of the time and money I would have wasted commuting to school! I picked up every shift I could that week. When Monday came around, I hadn’t read much—but I thought I was okay. 

You ran out of these excuses last year, this Ghost reminds me. I can’t refute them. I no longer had to commute, since I decided to just move downtown to Church Street to escape my family. I no longer had to work as much, since I relied more on OSAP. Since I could squeeze in more time by not experiencing the hour-long joys of delayed public transit during the Torontonian winter, I thought that I might finally get some schoolwork done. But I didn’t. I hadn’t cultivated a safety net of friends to inspire me, and I wasted away in my own filth of take-out containers, Netflix shows, and shame. The Monday after brought its usual shame and stress—but I thought I was okay. 

But Monday inevitably comes, and on that morning the Ghost of Reading Weeks Present kicked my bedroom door down. What have you got to say for yourself? they demanded. At this point in my fourth year, I found that my cup had runneth over in terms of my mental health issues. I was too afraid to do anything or talk to anyone, so I didn’t. This meant I missed too many classes, so I failed my first course in a long time. This meant I missed too many shifts, so I got fired. So, I forgot to promise myself that I’d be productive, I told the Ghost. And why would I? I blinked, and that Monday was already over. I skipped my lectures that day as well—only this time, I was warming up to the possibility that I wasn’t okay. 

It’s been some time since then. The Ghost of Reading Weeks Yet to Come has still to pay me their dreaded visit. But by now I think my parodistic framework has long overstayed its welcome, so I will become that Ghost for just a moment and deliver the moral of my own story. 

Some students find reading weeks to be a generally enriching part of their experience at the University of Toronto. They become opportunities to travel, to visit family, to break away from the monotony of undergraduate academia. Fewer still, at least from my own experience, get a lot of reading or other course work done over reading week. But a part of me hates asking that dreaded question: “So, what were you up to this reading week?” 

Why, you might ask, do I feel like an absolute waste of space and time? “I spent my week seeing my folks,” your hypothetical friend might say. “I didn’t do much—just all the readings and papers that you must have done too, and something just as productive, like volunteering. It was so good to get out of Toronto’s doom and gloom, you know?” 

I don’t know. In part, I theorize, because I don’t get to go home to a family. I don’t get to travel. I don’t get to deserve these things. Social comparison is one helluva drug. There’s definitely a nugget of truth to the possibility that how we students get to spend our reading weeks is influenced by factors outside our control—that is, mostly tied to socio-economic class. There are circumstances that prevent us from turning to friends or family for help, from travelling or just being productive, but we don’t talk about them. They’re buried deep inside, and sometimes they just burst out in unhealthy ways. 

That isn’t to say I’m upset at your hypothetical friend. The problem that I’m struggling to articulate—the problem that I’m raising without necessarily having a satisfying answer for—is how to deal with being upset at yourself for how you spent your reading week. The isolating, taking-everything-seriously, results-oriented model at this university encourages us to always do something more. Even if you take the week to relax, that relaxation is only acceptable in the framework of ‘bettering yourself’—feeling better, reading better, being better. So, when my experiences don’t align with these expectations, something breaks. 

Coping with this internalized shame is difficult. If I could just allow myself to be satisfied with myself and my reading week—but then again, that’s not how our brains work, is it? To the credit of my amazing friends, they tolerate my whining and talking about my issues. Perhaps we can justify our reading weeks to ourselves, dear reader, by turning to the titular song of this article from Van Halen’s Diver Down:  

Once we had an easy ride and always felt the same, 

Time was on our side and we had everything to gain. 

This could be like yesterday, 

Is that me with your happy days? 

Won’t you tell me: where have all the good times gone?

I’m not okay, and I’m not looking forward to that last visit by the Ghost of Reading Weeks Yet to Come. I can’t tell you where all the good times have gone, but I can tell you where they won’t be: comparing ourselves to someone else’s happy days.