Growing up everyone was told to ‘get a hobby’. However, as we grow older, we begin to notice that our hobbies seem to become one or two things. Either we hyperfixate and push those hobbies into becoming our jobs, or we let them go to make room for our “‘real”’ work.

It’s It is important to preserve hobbies from responsibilities. It’s It is sad to consider the number of times we have joined clubs or organizations to exercise a passion, and soon enough, the passions die down into deadlines and stress until there’s there is no longer a love for it anymore. If a friend asked what your hobbies are, your mind may wrap around the word “hobby”. What are the things we often enjoyed doing that have not turned into a responsibility or job title?

For juniors in college, hobbies outside of completing assignments include keeping your head above water —: attending all lectures, getting enough sleep, ensuring you eat enough in a day, and keeping your mental health in check. We would love to say that we’re we are all well-rounded individuals who are constantly fueled by creativity, but such is not the case.

The question, “W of “what do you like to do in your spare time?” sometimes stings when you realize you hardly have the energy to do anything in myyour spare time. We joke about how much we enjoy laying in bed (or “rotting,” as we call it), possibly eating a snack of choice or watching a show we enjoy. With that said, none of us count relaxing as a hobby, as recharging and consuming media isn’t is not really celebrated as a passion.

It i’s much easier to fail at a side project than something that determines self-worth as much as grades do. With that said, it is so much more painful to fail at something you were once passionate about because you realize you have been too burnt out to practice it. 

After devoting creative energy to assignments, you must realize it is important to find other outlets for creativity –while adamantly prohibiting them from becoming work that will lead to eventual burnout.

Athletes know a thing or two about over-specializing and suffering from it. Doing track and field for example. You’ve You have been participating since you were 5. You  reallyYou really enjoyed trying out all the different sports in school, and it was a bit sad sometimes that you did not have time to try them or a club because you did no't have time because of track practice. You can love the sport, but you sometimes wonder what if? Now in college, you may still prioritize your sport over many other things. 

As an athlete in high school, you are constantly asked where you will be playing in college and if you plan to. You worked your butt off to get onto the vVarsity team here at Ship, and everything immediately changed. The mental toll of college sports can never be understated. For mental health reasons teammates end up leaving the team early on in their college career, and this happening to college athletes is surprisingly common. Practices and the sport are treated to the point that they take over your life, and you are viewed as a number rather than a human with a life outside the sport. It becomes all-encompassing, and once you lose your play time or your coach's respect, you lose your will to keep fighting to be seen as more. 

You can love something, but you may be glad you didn’t did not end up majoring in it. For artists, you love being creative, but there comes a time every month that you can’t cannot make anything and being graded on something so objective can be stressful when art is meant as a stress reliever for most. 

Another hypothetical, you grew up loving cooking. As a kid, you would help with baking cookies and such, and maybe you wanted to be a chef when you grew up. Throughout your childhood, you really enjoyed cooking all kinds of things. When you got to high school, you saw the opportunity to attend the local vo-tech school (FCCTC) for culinary arts. 

For 10-12 grades, you spend the two marking periods in the spring going to vo-tech. Only after spending 3/8 of your time in high school studying culinary arts did you realize you wanted nothing to do with it as a career. The industry is terrible, the hours are terrible, the culture is terrible, and it sucked all the enjoyment out of cooking.

Instead of being something that you enjoyed doing as a hobby, it turned into labor that you resented. You can still like cooking, but you want nothing to do with cooking as a career. 

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