Pills and why they aren’t for all of us

I love coffee as much as the next student. My personal drink of choice is an espresso with soy milk and honey: plain, simple and refreshing. But I don’t drink coffee every morning. When I choose not to drink coffee, I’ll turn to a simple caffeine pill.

This pill, while well-known, is somewhat controversial simply because it comes in the form of a pill. Why is it that the student who goes through four double-shot espressos is lauded as a fallen hero, working tirelessly against the agenda they set for themselves, but the student getting the same caffeine from a pill is considered a hack for trying to get an edge above the rest? Whatever the cultural or social ideas you have about caffeine and how to ingest it, it seems hypocritical to tear down someone who may just not want to go through the process of roasting, grinding and brewing their cup every day or picking up their regular order at the Starbucks counter.

But while our socially acceptable crutch of caffeine is enjoyed almost universally on campus, there is a culture of normalization we need to be careful about propagating. The levels of stress we as students put on ourselves cannot be an excuse to seek shortcuts or "enhancements" that help us in the short-term because they can devastate us in the long-term. The normal conversations about exam week coming up coincide with more students seeking prescription drugs like Adderall to help them focus on work and be able to study. It’s a bad habit that can leave students feeling dependent on prescription medications.

I have felt the stress of studying for hours for several classes. Juggling the concepts of political theory and the history of mass communication in media can be a lot for anyone’s brain. But I had enough foresight to seek help and support from other classmates and get ahead of the curriculum to make sure the night before wasn’t a nightmare of stress and lack of sleep. I actively discouraged my classmates from seeking medication to focus on studying, some took my advice and some didn’t.

There are still plenty of things students can do to give themselves a boost without some sort of drug. School shouldn’t be a competition for who made the best grades or the best project in the class. We all came to college to become our best selves. Sometimes we may need a medical prescription, but for those of us who have no requirements for pills, we need to learn accountability in order to to own up to our failures and work to better ourselves.

What we can take away from this is that there is a common fear of failure. I fear every day something I do or don’t do may leave me with nowhere to go in life. I fear I may not reach some level of mastery others seem to so quickly attain. Those fears are more common than we realize. When we pull the curtains back, some of the most prolific thinkers and workers in the world today have gone through many trials to get where they are now.

Leslie Jones was in comedy for more than 30 years before she became the oldest Saturday Night Live cast member to join the show at 47. The author who penned “Dracula,” Bram Stoker, didn’t publish his gothic masterpiece until he was 51.

We as a generation feel burdened to rush ourselves to be like those before us, but those before us took years before they reached their height. Take a breather. Your great work isn’t going to run away from you. You just need to grow into it.

Daniel Gamboa is a UF journalism sophomore. His column appears on Fridays.