It has been one of those days. The February blues days where you wake up sniffling and feeling sorry for yourself, take an ibuprofen and crawl back under the duvet, convincing yourself that midterm revision can wait a few more hours – you need this. You need to watch another two episodes of Mad Men and spoon your hot water bottle. You need to eat two more spoonfuls of Ben and Jerries and ignore the bag of oranges that are still sat at the back of your fridge.
Except you don’t. What you need to do is splash your face with some cold water, open your windows, put on that song you always dance to your underwear in, and tell yourself it’s really not that bad.
As an exchange student, there’s a certain social media pressure to follow the crowd and post long, poetic blogs about your recent surfing trip, hike to a beautiful lake that even the best Instagram filter cannot justify, or even just another day not worrying about classes because hey, you only need 50% to pass. I’ve followed this trend with the best of them. My news feeds are clogged up with chair lift selfies at Whistler and walks on scenic beaches that are practically my back garden this year.
And that’s fine. Because 99.9% of the time, being an exchange student is exactly that. Laughing and adventures and trips and enjoying new places with minimal academic worry – much to the anger of fellow third year friends in Edinburgh who are furiously tapping at keyboards to hand in essays on time that actually count towards their degree classifications.
But I think it’s also important, that amongst the drunken snapchat stories and optimistic blog posts, we’re honest with each other about the 0.01% of days where everything isn’t snowboards and sunshine. It’s important that we accept that there will be the odd day or two where we skype home and realise that we haven’t seen our parents in six months, and actually quite miss their seemingly endless stream of questions about which internship schemes we are applying for, and where exactly that student loan is going (I promise, it’s not tequila shots..). I’m sure that most exchange students have had one of these days, where deadlines loom and you’ve been sat reading for so many hours that you’re craving a night out or just the social interaction of the server at the local coffee house.
For me that was today. Nothing awful occurred, no big disaster. Yet it was one of those days where I couldn’t help but feel I’d been sat at my desk in sweatpants for far too long, and facebook messages from friends back were home started to make me wish I could teleport to Edinburgh, just for one night back in the Hive.
As I sat at my desk feeling sorry for myself, l looked out of the window and realised that something very unusual was occurring in Vancouver. It wasn’t raining, not one bit. In fact, the pinkness of the clear sky made it look appealing to step outside. So, with sunset occurring in the next half hour, I did something very out of character indeed. I laced up my trainers, flung my hair into a bun, set my earphones to my feel good Friday playlist (who cares that it’s Sunday?) and went for a run.
Granted, although with Kanye’s Golddigger blasting I felt like the next Usain Bolt powering down Main Mall, the accidental reverse camera incident on the iphone later on, and people’s stares at my out of breath pants, proved that I probably more closely resembled a red in the face Bridget Jones. Regardless, I made it to UBC’s rose garden for sunset, a place where a view of ocean meets mountains never fails to make me feel very content.
With the view of the still water and the blood pounding in my ears, the endorphins actually kicked in (maybe I should do this more often?!) and everything I’d been feeling before began to slip away. Any feelings of missing home or midterm stress had vanished as a very out of breath me reached my front door, and proceeded to collapse onto my sofa.
It’s important to acknowledge that everyone has one of these days where for just a second it feels like the world may be caving in on you. But it’s also important to acknowledge that those feelings are extremely temporary, and the memories of your trips and laughs on exchange are permanent. So get out of those sweatpants, turn off Netflix and lace up your trainers – because it turns out the rumours are true – exercise is good for the mind.
<<< Sunset view from the Rose Garden.