Low-lifes who’ve never greened out in the Leo backyard their first time smoking weed will tell you that college is about building routine. To them I say, “That’s stupid and unspecific, but whatever, have it your way.” Over the past several months, I have established one consistent routine: stealing mugs from whichever ill-fortuned dining hall I happen to take my afternoon lunch in. Every. Day.
This ritual arose organically alongside my frequent contraction of the Yague, which might as well have been the runner-up for “things I was most successful at last semester.” Honorable mentions include: taking up at least three washing machines in the Bingham laundry room, always arriving exactly six minutes late for Spanish, and never—under any circumstances—cleaning my hair out of the shower drain.
Now, you’re a Yale student, so your pattern recognition must be pretty okay, and I trust you to take a second and identify the trend in this list of things I apparently do quite well. Are you having AP Lit flashbacks yet? Are you done? Okay, great.
No, it’s not that these habits make me sound like the kind of roommate whose unhygienicism ultimately drives you to transfer colleges. Unfortunately, the trend is that none of the stuff I’m best at is all that constructive. While the initial thrill of swiping a dining hall mug or two to bring back to my suite for midnight tea was fun, a mug a day is…less sustainable. If you took Intro to Micro last semester like me (though maybe I’m unqualified to even reference that course after credit/D/failing it and barely scraping by with a credit at all), you might apply the Law of Diminishing Returns to this situation.
The first mug was useful. The second mug, convenient. The third mug, while maybe a little excessive, great for when you have thirsty guests, or you’re trying to get your suitemate to drink something other than “MORE BEER” upon finding them drunk on the couch after a Thursday night out. The fourth mug is where it gets tricky. But still, maybe you have multiple guests over who all want tea. You might honestly need a fifth mug. A sixth, even. Perhaps a seventh (haha). But mug number eight is hard to justify, given the unlikelihood that all seven guests (assuming you regularly host seven guests in your suite) want tea.
Still, the mugs keep coming. And soon, you have more mugs than you do teabags. Not because you’re lacking teabags, but because you’re swimming in mugs. And you stop washing them. Because why wash mug number one when you could just leave it and move on to mug number two? And why wash mug number two when you could use mug number three? And now your bathroom countertop (you thank the housing gods for your in-suite bathroom—this would never fly if you had floormates) is overflowing with mugs, and your suitemates are mad at you, but instead of washing your mugs, you keep taking more.
It is at this point that I inevitably ask myself: is this kleptomania? Laziness? Was I gentle-parented to the point of adult incompetence? These are all logical possibilities, but I’d bet nineteen of my twenty-four mugs that something separate is likely contributing to the whole mug dilemma.
So, what’s the matter? Why the hell do I have so many mugs in my bathroom? And, while we’re at it, why have I had the Yague for the past five consecutive months? Why don’t I do my laundry more than once every three weeks when I run out of underwear? Why do I only get out of bed the minute after I know I’ve eliminated any possibility of getting to class on time? Lord knows I’m not going to med school. But, I have an informal self-diagnosis for you.
Chronic burnout. This isn’t the pretérito form of burnout—the big, explosive kind that debilitates you to the point of utter lethargy. That form is unviable. It’s also usually pretty short-lived because if it lasted as long as the chronic kind you would have dropped out by now. Chronic burnout, on the other hand, is the imperfect form (can you tell I’m taking L2 Spanish right now?). It is continuous and only subtly disruptive, so it can slip by unnoticed (well, almost unnoticed). There might be a few symptoms, like all the side-eyes your roommate has been giving you lately when he walks past your dirty mug display. And your Spanish grade. Well… and the guy you had to apologize profusely to at 3 a.m. when you used all six operable washing machines and he was standing there with his arms full of laundry because he didn’t even have enough laundry to warrant a hamper. Meanwhile, your hamper is bursting at the seams. Literally. The handles snapped off a month ago and your suitemate begrudgingly agreed to help you carry it through the courtyard like a goddamn canoe ever since. So, what is to be done? Because something clearly must be done, but nothing has been done, and I guess that’s on me for not doing anything. Hmmm. How bleak. Hold up, though, there’s hope.
You can still beat chronic burnout. And don’t be dissuaded by my telling you that to draft this last paragraph, I typed “how to beat burnout” into Safari and scanned the AI Overview. According to my highly credible sources, you just need to get enough sleep, start meditating, hit the gym, and “reframe your perspective” (whatever the fuck that means). But I think we all know that’s a load of bullshit. Because those goals are so unattainable, they might as well be New Year’s resolutions.
You want my actual advice? Yes, now the mug hoarder who doesn’t launder his clothes regularly is trying to give YOU advice. Practice daily gratitude (Google “Gratitoad Big Mouth episode” after this and watch it; that guy legitimately changed my life), try to get out of that all-or-nothing mindset you have going on right now (maybe that’s what they meant by “reframe your perspective”), and genuinely put your fucking phone down. I am dead serious, that thing is poisoning your mind. As for me, I’m gonna go wash my mugs. And maybe return them. One by one. Maybe. Or not.
