Rehab: Just in Time

Profs aren't going to keep telling you to stay off your phone or stay off facebook. They're not going to remind you about what needs to be done. Their job is to teach you, not to be your parent. They won't normally even tell you you're at risk of failing. If you don't pay attention, or fail to hand things in, or hand in mediocre work because you didn't give it the time it needed, it’s not their problem. It's yours. The decisions are all your to make; you just have to plan well enough, and control yourself well enough to decide what’s more important (easy), and then to do it (not easy at all).

Of course, you'll have learned by now that almost everything needs more time than you expected, never less. Maybe previously in your life, you had someone to help you make decisions like this, or some routine that you were used to and could stick to. Now you don't.

First term, I fell into all the traps. I had a lot of hangovers. I missed a lot of lectures, and even when I went I didn't make proper notes. I didn't begin my papers soon enough, and I didn't spend nearly enough time on them. I was never prepared for classes, or seminars, or tests.

Or the December exams.

Rehab was hard for me. Christmas meant feeling humiliated and sorry for myself. Then I realized that University is all about learning to take responsibility for yourself, to manage your time, and to improve your self control. It's about learning not to need crutches to keep you on the road and out of the gutter. Do that, and the rest follows.

Now it's almost the end of the year, and I feel great! But I look back a few months, and it scares me to think how close I came to losing everything.