Adventures in Minimalism Accelerated Learning Resources

Adventures in Minimalism

This fall semester has been challenging. I greatly underestimated how demanding five seminars could be as a senior. The past month has been one of the more miserable experiences of my time at Georgetown; an endless parade of papers, projects and presentations preoccupied me. I was able to catch my breath for a few days during the Thanksgiving break, but then I fell seriously ill. I guess my body just knows when to shut down. Now, I am assembling (or more accurately, salvaging) the remaining pieces of my academic life.

I trace some of my troubles to a moment of revelation back in late October. A few weeks prior, I had been thinking about how difficult it would be to balance my classes and extracurricular commitments with a concurrent job search. I struggled to find a modus operandi that would not sacrifice quality or focus. Then a night at the Kennedy Center introduced me to a genre of music that I intuitively had always enjoyed: minimalism.

Unfortunately, the minimalist ethos influenced my everyday thinking too much. Instead of overextending myself, I decided to be incredibly protective of my down time and remove unnecessary stress. I spent hours with friends over meals, took walks admiring the fall foliage and slept.

It was glorious. But it came at a cost.

I inevitably started falling behind in classes and when unexpected events (family- or work-related) arose, I was woefully unprepared to handle them. To make matters worse, I was miserably ill during the Thanksgiving break when I had planned to catch up and get ahead with schoolwork.

Despite the misstep, I feel confident as I head into the next two weeks of paper writing. Things always manage to fall into place. My classes have ended, and I know I was able to grow intellectually because of the diversity and depth of material covered. I am excited for my research and look forward to being done with 65 pages of writing. Most importantly, I am eager to spend some time with my loved ones without a looming doom of coursework.

I did apply for a job during my flirtation with a minimalist lifestyle, however. It is one of the brighter spots of my accidental experiment. A few weeks later, I was offered an interview. This news led to a return to my normal way of thinking. This is where I am today. In two weeks, I will be able to look back on fall 2010 with some regret but mostly a great appreciation of my strengths and weaknesses as well as a sincere admiration for the family and friends that put up with me during the process.

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