The Art of Getting Sick In College

Last night, I laid in bed in my college home and wished for sleep. My throat had started to feel a bit sore earlier that day, but by nightfall, I could feel the pain creeping into my neck and ears and nose. Sleep wasn't going to be easy that night.

Hopefully, I closed my eyes and something in my subconscious instantly transported me to my childhood bedroom. My queen bed seemed to shrink into the twin that had once donned princess patterned sheets. I could sense the big windows behind me and the quiet, winding, suburban street beyond them. On nights when dryness and sickness would keep me up, I used to crack open those windows and fall asleep looking at the stars.

At that moment, I felt that if I reached my hand out, I would feel the white wicker end table that watched over my bedside from birth to high school. Where my mom would place painted bowls of crackers when I had a virus and couldn't stomach anything else, or cold washcloths when my skin radiated fever-hot.

But then I opened my eyes. And I saw my fresh and modern bedside table, and on top of it, a prescription for migraine medication that I ordered and picked up myself.

One of the only times I feel homesick is when I'm actually sick. When I was younger, being sick meant the world stopped. It meant staying home and watching DVDs all day, because Netflix wasn't streaming yet. It meant missing one day's worth of worksheets, that I probably wouldn't have to make up.

In college, professors will tell me they don't want me in class if I'm sick. They love to say that staying home will be far more beneficial than coming to class, but they fail to mention that I'll still be responsible for whatever material I miss. Unless I need to be hospitalized, the amount I'll fall behind is hardly ever worth taking a sick day.

Smart, or seasoned, college kids know that an illness doesn't equal a break anymore. So we load up perfect concoctions of painkillers, decongestants, and vitamin C that will last for as long as class does. We don't need it to last any longer, because as soon as the clock hits fifty minutes, we're out the door and back in a dizzy, sick haze.

Most of the time, or rather all the time, work doesn't end when we leave the classroom. We have hours of homework on top of studying for tests and completing textbook readings. Our brains can barely remember our first names, but we've figured out how to tune them to the perfect frequency that lets us bypass the nauseous trance we're in and get shit done.

Collegiate sickness pros also know that if we don't stock up our medicine cabinets in advance, we're shit out of luck. Unless our roommates are burnouts that don't go to class, no one has the time to run to the drug store for us. We show up to school with cough drops and Gatorade in bulk. When we start to run out of supplies, we Amazon Prime that shit.

Being sick in college is an art form.

Maybe this is why I find myself feeling nostalgic about the days when it wasn't.