Midterm season often finds me running on disturbing amounts of caffeine, staring at blank assignments until 3 a.m. while the cramped to-do list next to me only grows longer. But I wonder—does anyone else feel like they have no idea what they’re doing or is it just me?
Chances are, most students can relate. And yet, it feels like everyone else is making it look so easy.
Despite the popular perception of Emerson students as a commune of self-liberated artists, most of us tend to chain ourselves down with loads of internal expectations—mostly about the next assignment, how many film sets to join, and which internships are hiring. But here’s the thing: Emerson isn’t as academically rigorous as other schools in the area like MIT or Tufts. We’re not drowning in calculus equations or 40-page research papers. Our coursework isn’t designed to break us academically. Instead, our stress comes from the suffocating pressure to always be creative.
How many of us are in ten student orgs at the same time? How many of us are working on productions until 4 a.m.? There’s always one more project to be a part of, one more club to join, one more bullet point to add to our resume. You can’t just be a student here. Jazmyn Mason, a sophomore marketing major, described this atmosphere as: “be[ing] everything everywhere all at once. If you’re not constantly busy, you’re failing.”
However, toxic productivity extends far beyond Boylston Street. In the United States especially, it’s the bare minimum. Life is about working. Maybe that’s why, as an international student, I notice this pressure so intensely.
In many European nations, work-life balance is a priority. Here, being busy is a badge of honor. A survey revealed that 48% of U.S. workers reported working more than 40 hours per week, compared to 31% of European workers. In countries like France, labor laws such as the “right to disconnect” allow employees to ignore work communications outside official hours, aiming to reduce burnout and improve work-life balance. Whereas here, employees feel discouraged from taking more than 10 days for vacation, annually.
And at a place like Emerson, where careers in creative industries are unpredictable, students feel even more pressure to constantly be achieving new goals. Plus, our overwhelming access to technology makes it easier for us to observe what we are not doing compared to those who are. Granted, Boston is very competitive. Securing an internship here is almost as difficult as being more than a five-minute walk away from a Dunkin’. But is toxic productivity really making us more productive? Or is it merely making us exhausted?
“It’s impossible not to compare yourself when everyone around you is doing so much. You see someone post about getting an internship or releasing a short film, and suddenly you feel like you’re behind—even if you’ve been working nonstop,” said Manasi Sadipiralla, a sophomore marketing major.
The exhaustion and anxiety at the end of each week made me feel like I was on a clock. And I realized that we kind of are.
“Even when I try to rest, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m wasting time,” said Jaclyn Kotora, a sophomore political communication major.
Every semester feels like a countdown. We stack up planners with deadlines, mapping our lives in hours, days, months, years until “Where do you see yourself in five years?” becomes a threat instead of a question about our dreams. We scramble to stack our resumes, build portfolios, and chase opportunities as if we’re running out of time. And maybe that’s why stopping feels so terrifying—because in a world that moves this fast, pausing feels like burning up.
In reality, over-productivity isn’t really productive at all. According to Slack’s Workforce Index research, employees who feel obligated to work after hours register 20% lower productivity scores. And in a college environment where mental health is already under a test, overworking yourself can lead to feeling like you’re in survivor mode. Nearly 75% of college students find school overwhelming, with 46% having a diagnosed mental health condition. Students experiencing burnout experience a decline in memory retention and concentration, weakening decision-making abilities, and diminished motivation, leading to less productivity overall. And nearly one in four students need to take a leave of absence due to mental health struggles.
So really, overworking ourselves isn’t giving us high accomplishments—it’s numbing us to the point where achievements feel like temporary relief from our main obligations instead of actual fulfillment. And we just get stuck in a cycle of trying to catch up to an impossible standard that no one is actually achieving.
Truly, how many of us really feel like we have it all figured out? Probably none. No matter how put-together someone seems, no one has it all figured out. Because our college years are times of exploration and uncertainty. It’s the moment we go out there to learn and figure it out—not a time we spend thinking we should already know everything.
It’s important to remember that where we are now was once our goal. It’s easy to get caught up in chasing the next milestone, so much that we forget to appreciate how far we’ve already come. Maybe success isn’t about over-productivity and constantly moving forward; maybe it’s about learning to stand still for a moment and recognize that the present is part of the journey too. And the next part of the journey might be uncertain, but it’s also limitless.
And, after all, if we all feel lost—maybe we’re all actually in the right place.
