Okay, so the title of this article might be slightly misleading. But it got you to start reading, didn’t it? Without the hyperbole, I got food poisoning last week and did not have a good time. When I tried getting out of bed the morning after I got sick, I ended up fainting twice and felt really foggy throughout the rest of the day. Honestly, it was probably the sickest I’ve felt in my entire life. I’d never full-on fainted before, and it was pretty scary to be standing one second and on the ground the next. Luckily, it seemed to be a 24-hour thing, and I’m feeling much better now. We writers tend to use this sort of stuff as fodder for our creative genius, though, so here goes my inspiration and what I learned from spending an entire day bedridden and feeling like death.
I read some cheesy Tumblr post one time that said something along the lines of, “You can only tell if someone really cares about you if you experience death or sickness. Therefore, some fun first date ideas would be to poison your date or commit homicide.” Obviously, they were joking — but you get the point. It’s not often that you get the chance to see how people in your life would react when things go really wrong. I, however, was lucky enough to get that opportunity last Thursday. Because of it, I am more thankful now than ever for the connections I’ve made at Stevens. So many of my friends were willing to drop everything when I told them what happened to me. Whether it was chicken noodle soup or Tylenol or Rolaids or a surprise gift of chocolate from the local CVS, they helped me in whatever way they could, and I appreciate it more than I can say. Hopefully, I won’t have to go through something like that again anytime soon, but it’s really good to know that I have people I can rely on when things get really rough.
The more I thought about all this, the more I started realizing something about life at Stevens. First off, there are some amazing people that go here whose heroism goes unnoticed on a daily basis. Secondly, I think that all of our hours slaving over difficult classwork and stressing ourselves to the max brings us closer together. Movies always portray characters growing close after stressful or dangerous experiences, and I think it’s not crazy to say something similar happens at Stevens. Because we’ve spent so many difficult times together, we’ve grown closer to our peers than we might think. It’s important to keep that in mind as we continue through our days and push toward spring break. You’ll have to take my word for it, though — unless you plan on getting food poisoning anytime soon. For now, though, be careful what you eat and be thankful for the community that stress at Stevens provides us.
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