Photo by: Jen Windsor
Emily Adlet Roe, second-year UCSD student, reported Monday that she had organized her “whole life” for the first time. When pressed, Roe admitted that when she said her “whole life,” she was referring specifically to her bedroom.
“Okay, fine, I just organized my bedroom,” Roe said. “I didn’t, like, organize the kitchen or anything, or finish my homework, but I never leave my bedroom anyway so it’s basically my whole life.”
Roe noted that organizing her room had begun as a way to procrastinate on chemistry homework. Upon the task’s completion, however, she found that she was feeling “so much better, like I could do anything here.” Roe later admitted that she’d since failed to do anything productive in her newly-organized room.
The idea of getting organized had occurred to her when she was “searching for SOMETHING to give me that sweet accomplishment high.” She remembered that her friend Ashley Judson, “told me maybe I should quit whining and just do things and that would make me happy.
“I think I really pulled it off this time,” Roe said. “Before fixing my room, I’d tried drinking lots of water and taking notes in class, even though I couldn’t focus enough to reread them or remember the lecture. I did yoga after six people asked me if I was doing it yet; Aunt Sherry posted three different articles about it on my Facebook wall. I even tried weed, and then I tried it again. A lot.”
“Yoga is the best way to release all that toxic stress and sadness,” Roe’s yoga instructor Randy Finkleson suggested. “Just breathe, fam. Connect to your inner chakras.” Finkleson then bent over backwards into a perfect reverse coffee table pose, while saying he could “feel the reuptake of [his] serotonin being selectively inhibited!” Finkleson also mentioned that he had only met Roe once, though he hoped she would “shed her material fetters and just tune in to the vast joyful cosmos.”
Roe said she was excited to enter a newly happy and productive stage of her life without the need to consult CAPS or off-campus therapists.
“It turns out I was just being lazy the whole time, and the stuff my brain was always screaming at me when I was sad was right! All I have to do now is buckle down, ignore my exhaustion and physical health, shame myself into productivity, socially isolate myself because I don’t deserve to have emotional connections, and make lots of sacrifices in my personal life in order to adhere to an arbitrary standard of superficial perfection expected by society!”
Zone employee Reyna Robbits expressed great joy that Roe was now feeling “properly Bright, Bubbly, and Beautifully productive” about her life. “Those are the three Bs of The Zone,” Robbits gushed. “It’s always good to see another student blossom!” She indicated a nearby poster, reading “Zone Tip #88: happiness is what you make of it – even if you can’t make your term papers, you can still always manufacture some happiness! Don’t know how? Whatever, just do it anyway.*” The small print notes even fake happiness can be sold for substantial profit.
When it was pointed out to Robbits that none of her metaphors made much sense, she frowned and began to deliver a lecture entitled: “Shooting Stars: Believing in Yourself to the Moon and Back.”
When Roe was contacted for a follow-up, she failed to reply until much later, apologizing profusely and indicating her depression had made it difficult to summon enough energy to respond. Roe reported she had finally made an appointment with CAPS, and expects to see a psychologist “sometime after I graduate.”
Written by Jaz Twersky and Kavita Poduri, copy editor and staff writer
