An Unstoppable Bell
By: Jacqueline Fisher
Tags: Coronavirus, Stress, Pandemic Diaries, Burnout, Law School

I’ve joked several times throughout this pandemic that my brain is “mashed potatoes.” It’s a mental state of being whipped, mashed, and smashed to a buttery sludge. What fiber exists in the humble potato has been obliterated.

The brain that my law Professors have so arduously trained to drudge through the most arcane, convoluted, and puzzling judicial opinions is no more. Something has changed at the cognitive level. What’s worse, it’s exam season. For law school, this generally means your entire grade for the semester rides on these weeks. Finals are a three week marathon where the library is open for 24 hours, tears are shed, and you may have a hard time coming by a four pack of Red Bull at the CVS around the corner.

This semester looks different: we’re all remote. I’m taking my exams from a spare room in my childhood home. There’s no library cubicle in the brutalist stacks to isolate myself in, and after a semester of zoom classes where my information retention has been questionable, the pressure couldn’t be higher.

But something isn’t clicking.

In Middle School, we watched a video in health class that taught us that a little stress was good- it was the alarm bell in your head that reminded you to do something.

For some reason, I’m not hearing the alarm bells. I can’t focus. I feel like I can barely read. The pressure isn’t computing.

It’s frustrating, it defies my expectations. Normally, I thrive under pressure. My best academic semesters as an undergraduate were the ones with difficult courses and an obscene amount of extracurricular activities. There were late nights and a few less-than-satisfactory deliverables, but I never doubted it would get done. Having a lot on my plate forced me structure my time and keep my momentum always moving forward like a pristine series of gears.

If I’ve been a pristine series of gears in the past, then mashed potato brain is the opposite. I can only attribute this change to the unique, chronic stress of a global pandemic.

My pandemic stress started high. I spent the first month of the pandemic in terror for my family who’s concentrated in the Greater New York City Area. That terror subsides as the shutdowns start, we bend the numbers, we learn more about how to keep ourselves safe. The stress kicks up again when a healthy, young friend gets Coronavirus. I bring her food and supplies when I can, each time terrified that I may have brought the virus back with me. I hold my breath for my family members who must go into the hospital and give birth. And that’s just what’s personal to me- add on the skyrocketing unemployment figures, images of lines of cars for food assistance, it’s too much on all of us to consume.

During this time, I’m graded on a pass fail basis. There’s enough on our plates as students. We all know it’s not normal, and no one pretends it is. That doesn’t stop the stress bell.

Horror stories continue, even as we learn that masks are effective and our risks are low when we’re outside. My family stays safe, but as President of my school’s student government, I constantly hear from those who have borne the worst of the pandemic. I do what I can, and feel guilty when it’s not been enough. As a future lawyer, I can’t help but absorb the individual cruelties and the institutional failures of our system. It all rings.

The numbers of this pandemic are worse than they were in those first terrifying weeks. More people I know are getting sick.

Which brings me to the present. Exhausted. Burnt out. The words of this entry are the most I’ve been able to produce in hours. I’ve spent so much energy simply trying to cope that I can’t expend more on trying to synthesize a semester of criminal procedure, or tax law, or whatever else.

I think that’s why the pressure of exams is not kicking me into gear the way it used to. Stress loses its meaning when there’s no reprieve from it.

When there’s been an alarm bell ringing in your head for 8 months, you learn to tune it out.