By Anna McCormally

Last week’s opinion piece by Hannah Leifheit and Kristin Busch, “Sometimes the ‘real world’ gets priority” did not stun me with the quality of its thesis: that the number of activities Earlham students get involved with has negative effects on their schoolwork, and that professors should not only understand, but accommodate them — especially since the activities we do outside of class are more real than the ones we do in class.

Or was it: Hey … college is hard.

It doesn’t seem to me that Earlham’s professors are the ones who are having trouble “perceiving the whole picture.”

Leifheit and Busch’s pronouncement that they could be accomplishing more in the REAL world than in the “Earlham Bubble” leads me to pose a question to them: if you are restless in class, thinking of all you could get done if you hadn’t gone, if you have so many priorities above schoolwork that you need to actually ask professors to accommodate your margin of error as overcommitted students — well… why are you here? Why sign up for classes that you feel aren’t helping you accomplish REAL things?

It is insulting to professors and to fellow students to state so baldly that class is a waste of time considering that class is—aside from being a very expensive and sought-after privilege— completely voluntary. And while, of course, some things—a lot of things, to be sure—are more important than schoolwork, if you’re going to make a choice to put something above your schoolwork, then you have given up your right to feel indignant when your schoolwork suffers.

To over-commit yourself to athletics, volunteering, work study, student government and music groups in addition to being a student, and then feel exhausted and unhealthy, and accuse the system of being broken and expect professors to change their classes to fit your overwhelming lifestyle? That is something that I can’t get behind.

Leifheit and Busch asked in their article: How does one do classes along with everything else there is to do in a community as vibrant as Earlham’s? And the answer is: you don’t do everything. Something does have to give — and it might be athletics, or volunteering, or work study, or student government or music groups. For some people, it might mean letting schoolwork slide.

Any of the above is fine. The point here is: whatever your choice is, own it. Don’t ask professors to accommodate it.