Knowing When to Push Through, and When to Pause

As a university student, one of the hardest lessons I’ve learned is when to push through and when to pause. In the constant, never-ending flow of assignments to turn in, quizzes to take, and essays to write, there’s no real natural rest point outside of our semesterly breaks. This is tough to learn as someone attending their hometown university, so managing this learning curve in a new environment can be even more challenging.

When we learn about our habits, our goals, and the endurance required to achieve them, it can expose certain parts of ourselves and how we view our goals in ways that we may not be ready to face. It teaches us what we actually want in life, and facing what goes into that can be discouraging as a young adult still learning the ropes and about ourselves. Am I considered lazy for not wanting to work hard toward this goal? This major? Am I someone who works hard? Am I someone who just wants a job that pays for my bills and lifestyle, or am I someone who wants a career? What am I willing to sacrifice, and what do I deem worthy of these sacrifices? Ultimately, learning about your relationship with perseverance means learning about you.

What Perseverance Looks Like Today

As someone born in 2001, I was lucky enough to have witnessed the growth of the internet, and as a result, I’ve seen the discourse change from funny videos on Vine to hustle culture videos on TikTok. It seems like every day there’s a new streamer or influencer posting on Instagram, practically screaming at the camera, bragging about how they came up from the bottom, and now look at all that they have! They seem to ask: “I got all of this on my own, why can’t you?”

However, it’s important to remember a few different things from Social Media 101. The first of which is that not everything online is real. We know this. If anything, this is a lesson that my generation and the ones that follow know well because of the amount of time we spend online and around influencers. Anyone can fake almost anything online, especially in the age of AI. Secondly, we shouldn’t fill in the blanks for influencers. It’s easy to see what someone has and to follow that up with the assumption that they have everything else. There’s someone online who has a nice living space? It must be filled with so much outside love. There’s someone who goes around filming how kind they are to strangers? They must be the most sincere person ever! There’s someone online who goes to a prestigious university? They probably never struggle with schoolwork. It’s easy for these assumptions to appear because we truly see so little of their life; however, it’s important to remember that they live a life as complex as ours. Thirdly, failure is a part of life. It’s easy to believe that everyone you want to model your life around has done it in one try, but most of the time that simply isn’t the case. No one can completely 180 their life overnight, and especially not without hiccups along the way.

All this is to say that it’s important to step away from the internet. I single this out because it’s far too easy to get sucked into the online echo chamber of despair and feel as if nothing exists outside of it. Terms such as doomscrolling exist for a reason. It’s important to remember the beauty in everyday life, to experience it, and to feel it in order to make it tangible. Hard moments become significantly more bearable once we have that beauty to fall back on. Everyone considers how the hard days make the good days feel better, but we don’t consider that it works the other way around as well. The more that we validate what we see online and accept it as fact, the easier it is for us to excuse ourselves from working toward our goals. What’s the point of trying if everything feels doomed? We’re often trained to think this way, which can make it increasingly harder to maintain a sense of perseverance, but it’s always important to remember to keep working towards your goals despite that. Knowing the importance of persevering is just as important as learning how to maintain it. 

How to Make Perseverance More Sustainable

Again, one of the hardest lessons you learn during your university years is how to push through while avoiding burnout. It’s definitely easier said than done! There are phases where you feel unstoppable and can burn through a million different assignments in one evening, and there’s nothing wrong with that; let those assignments bite the dust! But there are also phases where you can’t get one assignment out of the way, even if your life depended on it. These phases are completely normal, and there’s really nothing that one can tangibly do to avoid them because every phase of our lives brings different challenges and different levels of mental endurance. What’s important isn’t learning to avoid these hurdles, but rather learning how to manage them. Sometimes, managing them means pushing through, and sometimes, it means knowing when to take a break.

The first thing to remember, and arguably the most important lesson of all, is that rest is productive. Taking a quick nap is just as important as sending those emails, completing those tasks, or even folding that laundry. Creating routines can absolutely help with this as well. Most everyone I know, myself included, keeps Sunday as a rest day, and I find that doing this helps to prepare me for the week. I take the time these days to read, play some kind of video game, or work on a LEGO if I can. There’s nothing wrong with being human and needing a break to replenish energy before focusing entirely on the task at hand, especially if it has to do with something you’re passionate about. Doing things you enjoy doesn’t stay enjoyable if you’re running on empty!

Secondly, be outrageous. Be a fangirl; have a really niche hobby or interest; be the most absurd version of yourself that you can be. We’re past the time of being encapsulated in our small towns and high schools, where technology wasn’t a thing, and we didn’t know much outside of ourselves. We’re living in a time where being weird is encouraged, or, at the very least, it’s becoming easier to find your crowd. It’s important to nourish this version of yourself because when you’re in a boring lecture or dealing with a task you don’t really like, this version carries that joy and excitement about life.

I recently went to a 5 Seconds of Summer concert, and the version of myself I’ve been seeing since then is one that I haven’t seen since middle school. That outrageous, fangirl attitude that’s made an appearance is the happiest version of myself I know, and listening to that iconic fangirl era of music is completely cathartic and reminds me of how unserious everything is. Taking yourself unseriously to reflect on your serious side is the exact kind of dichotomy that allows you to take a break from the serious tasks and come back more refreshed.

The third and final thing is to find your passion. When I came back to school after switching majors from Sonography to English, I noticed that my attitude towards school completely shifted. I was excited to do the work because now it felt as if it had true purpose, and it had nothing to do with one major being better than the other, but everything to do with which major was better suited for me and what I enjoyed. It can become easier to follow through with tasks once you have a clear, exciting end goal in mind. Little things that help to keep you on track include journaling, collages, and my personal favorite, vision boards! Whether digital or physical, vision boards can really help paint a picture and declutter your mind, which is incredibly useful in itself.

Knowing What Is Right for You

Whatever you take from these three tips, the underlying advice is to do what works for you and what makes you happy. No two people have the same routine, needs, or goals, and it becomes significantly harder to learn what works best for you if you’re comparing yourself to others. Remember to take a breath and to give yourself grace. One of the best revelations you have once you get older is learning to be as kind to yourself as you are to others. You wouldn’t get upset at a celebrity taking a hiatus or an influencer making a small mistake, and you should definitely give yourself that same treatment.

About the Author

Jocelyne is a senior at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing and a minor in Criminal Justice. Her interests include reading, writing, and exploring storytelling with a focus on cultural identity.