Everybody gets sick sometime in their lives. It’s just a way of life; a factor sometimes outside of our range of control. It’s almost… random. Sometimes, people just get sick more often than others and sometimes people just get more sick than others and it’s just outside our range of our control.
However, even though this happens, being sick should almost never be an excuse. You’re not the only one that’s been sick before, there’s been billions that have come before you that has gotten sick and they’ve turned out fine. And moreover, with our technology today, it’s most likely not going to be our last cold anytime soon.
But hey, some say that being sick is a reason to not go to work or school. And I agree with that — to a degree. As ABC states, there are two reasons to not go to work: if their symptoms prove too difficult or painful to overcome or, if your disease is highly contagious. And really, you shouldn’t go to work or school if one of those two cases are prevalent. If you attend a highly packed environment like Naperville North, you risk causing an epidemic-like occurrence which would affect hundreds if not thousands. And also, if you can’t manage to stay focused or even functional throughout a small section of time like a period, it’s probably better to say home.
But even though you are staying home, being sick isn’t an excuse to do nothing, to get extensions on tests or deadlines that are coming up. You’re home! You now have an extra eight to ten hours of time. Sure, you really should be using some of that time to catch up on sleep and rest up. However, you’re not going to be doing that all day. So instead, many of us spend hours upon hours of these days doing nothing: watching TV shows, texting. Then, we come in the next day having done nothing and ask for an extension.
Why though?
There’s literally no reason to. Even if you feel sluggish less alert as the American Psychological Association claims (which are symptoms of some colds), The Wall Street Journal also discovered that there are “no significant relationships… between mood changes and nasal secretions, or between performance changes and symptom scores, sleep duration or mood changes… [and that] cold symptoms… aren’t related to changes in performance”. So, instead of spending all that time on your phone or in front of the TV, you could be making much better use of your time studying, reading, doing work.
Calling in a sick day isn’t an excuse to not do work. And, unless your suffering from extreme migraines, headaches, is permanently bedridden, or sitting in or in front of a toilet all day, you have no excuses. You’re fully functional and able to work! As even if you do feel sluggish or off, it’s mostly a state of mind.
However, I do have a couple warnings. Do not try to over-exert yourself physically when you are sick. As researched extensively by Time (and also observed in myself), exercising while you are experiencing symptoms make the disease worse and or more dangerous to your health. Also, do not try to work when you are suffering from something that affects your brain. These could prove catastrophic to your safety, that of others, and your carrier.
Now in the end, please understand that being sick isn’t an excuse, that the world doesn’t revolve around to care about you.
Your life, your impact, your legacy is entirely in your hands — not those of others. If you want to make dreams come true, do it with your abilities and your powers! Don’t expect them to just happen. There will become a day where you stop receiving sympathy and care for being sick so stop being a Sally. This is your life so go out there, give it your, and make your step on our planet; life your life free of regrets of what could’ve been.
Loooove it man! I actually found this pretty funny because I try telling my parents all the time when I’m home sick that I can still do my homework but then they end up telling me that i’ll end up more sick and force me to get some more rest. I’ll make sure to show them these stats next time!
I really like how you focused on how people can’t make excuses all the time, and the most common one is being sick. I think it’s important to get work done, and definitely agree that being sick doesn’t always take away from your abilities to do work. I also agree that yes you should take the time to focus on getting better by sleeping or just resting, but that maybe takes about 1-2 hours and then the rest of the day is yours to get work done. Personally, I still do work when I’m sick, I still come to school when I have a sore throat, having a sore throat doesn’t mean I’m going to get everyone else sick, so why should it affect my ability to do work. I also agree with not doing physical activity when you’re sick because your body just needs a little break, and working out won’t help that, again I personally experienced this with volleyball. I think one thing you could add to your blog is what we as the readers should do after reading it, like should we start seizing every opportunity to expand our knowledge? Should we start thinking about some of the excuses we made or will make in the future and how it will affect our education? Otherwise, your blog is well written! You didn’t sugar coat anything which really makes your writing stand out, and I enjoyed reading it :)
I like how direct you are with the readers. While I mostly agree with your point on not making excuses just because you’re sick, I think that it’s unfair for people who actually need to rest in order to recover from the sickness that they have. You make a good argument on how feeling sluggish is a state of mind and it should not prevent you from doing work. I think that being in a total state of rest will help your recovery faster, rather than trying to do work while sick. Ray Lewis made a great point about how America celebrates”workaholic driven culture too much and that we should praise the people who are able to find balance between work, rest, and life. Your message in this blog post is great in motivating people to continue working so that they can build their legacies. I just think that people sometimes need to take time off so that they can get their mental and physical health in order.
Seeing as I almost stayed home this morning for being somewhat sick in order to relax, a large part of me really wants to dislike this article, but I just can’t! While I think that we all need breaks now and again just for ourselves–even if the sysmptoms of burnout aren’t too extreme or difficult “to overcome”–I do believe that people do give up at the first hints of illness. Though its only helpful up to a point, trying to power through an illness can shift you mindset away from learned helplessness and help you get better. It’s the blunt wake up call I needed haha. I really enjoyed the way you chose to define criteria for staying home and used the concept of time to outline your argument.
Being sick sucks, but being behind on work is arguably worse, as I know. Especially in MVC, where if you miss one day, you can clueless on how to do the homework, it’s much more work to catch up than it is to just go to school. It’s kind of an opportunity cost: you can stay home and do nothing, but you’ll pay the price later. Of course, there are limits like you said, but if possible, I’d rather not waste any time.