Houston Astros’ Dallas Keuchel and Cameron Maybin celebrate after Game 7 of baseball’s World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017, in Los Angeles. The Astros won 5-1 to win the series 4-3. (David J. Phillip/AP)
In case you missed it, the Houston Astros won the World Series. For the first time in franchise history, the Astros will bring the World Series trophy back to Houston. It’s a big deal. It’s also a big deal for UConn. George Springer, the World Series MVP, is UConn alumnus.
As a UConn fan and an Astros fan, this week has been great. The men’s basketball team won, the women’s basketball team won and the Astros won. You could say I’m on cloud nine right now. But in the grand scheme of things, none of this matters… kind of.
We all have ridiculous schedules. We attend class four to five days a week. That takes up most of our day. When we aren’t in class, we try to balance eating, sleeping and doing homework. Outside of that, we try to find time to have some kind of social life or just relax on our own. And that’s during a normal week. When exams hit, it’s a totally different story. Then the world explodes into chaos. We somehow have to fit in time to cram for our exams and time to cope with all of the “L”s we take after those exams inevitably go horribly.
At the end of the day you have to learn how to celebrate all of the victories no matter how outside of your life they are. Don’t get me wrong; I love my teams. Them winning gives me an excuse to relax and get totally drunk. But in the long run, the Huskies winning a basketball or football game isn’t really going to help me. I came to UConn to get a degree, not to follow our sports teams, though that is an added benefit. The only thing that really matters is how I do in my classes and how many good pictures I create at work.
But if I only focused on those things,I would go completely insane.
I’ve talked a lot about burning out and needing to find breaks. Celebrating all of your victories goes along with that. You are going to take a lot of “L”s in college. You will definitely fail at least one exam. Guaranteed. It’s sad but true. You will also definitely sleep through something important or not study enough for a quiz or just party way to much before an important day. All of that is bound to happen in college.
If you only focus on what goes wrong in college you will have a sad time. Instead you need to find and celebrate all the victories, like the Astros winning the World Series. Sure it doesn’t affect me, but it makes me happy so that’s a victory. And it makes the hard week a little easier. I’m currently dying of a cold, but watching the men’s basketball team have a great game on Monday made the cold somewhat bearable.
As they say in the greatest cinematic movie of our time, “Zombieland,” you need to celebrate the little things. If it helps survive a zombie apocalypse, it’ll certainly help you survive college.
Amar Batra is a senior staff photographer and weekly columnist for The Daily Campus. He can be reached via email amar.batra@uconn.edu. He tweets at @amar_batra19.