Each time these three have been unbalanced, bad things have happened. If you pause to reflect, this should make sense. Spend too much time with friends and too little on classes, and you flunk. Spend too much time on classes and too little with friends, and you’ll be alone. It’s this latter one that gets me.

We all know that it’s not right to be a workaholic, but do we realize that excessive studying is the same thing? I didn’t until recently. When the realization hit me, it made me pause and reflect.

I’m a workaholic. More precisely, I’m an addict. Most of us at Wash. U. were chosen for our addiction to studying. In high school, we might not have cared about the material in a class, but damn it we were going to get that A. We needed it like any other junky needs the junk.

Addictions throw off the balance of life, and imbalance always leads to bad things. These bad things might not be apparent, and they might not even be called bad. Take materialism for example.

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone saying that an A is a bad thing, and indeed you’ll often hear snippets of students bragging about how much time they spent on an assignment or how little they have slept. You’ll also hear the daredevil trying to shock by saying how little time he spent. His shock value is wholly derived from the high value we place in grades.

These braggarts have missed the point. The point isn’t to see how much time you can spend working. The point of life is to live it. You’re not going to remember your GPA when you leave college. You’re going to remember your friends. A kitschy plaque in the dimly-lit office of a car garage read, “Don’t spend so much time making a living that you forget to make a life.”

One might wonder why we’re all addicts. Our society spoon-feeds us the value of competition and materialism from the cradle. This is why everyone needs that A. We can crush our peers with our numerically-superior GPA, and that GPA is the best of our possessions. It’s the key to the material world.

Once, at an admissions workshop in high school, an admissions official from Northwestern University passed out three applications. Each table discussed the three and decided whether to admit, waitlist or reject. One was an obvious rejection, but the other two were nearly even. The principle difference was that one had a higher GPA and that the one with a lower GPA had held a part-time job throughout high school.

Many were surprised to find that the job-holding student was rejected for not having a high enough GPA. The mitigating factor of a part-time job was not even considered. The whole university admissions game is ruled by the GPA (as well as test scores, but you can see how those tie-in to the GPA).

Now that you’re in college, you should take a break and consider how important grades really are. Look ahead to where the quest for the highest GPA leads and ask yourself if you want to be addicted to work all of your life.

Try to get off the junk that is grades. Keep in mind the ideal of balance at all times, and you’ll find that things are more harmonious. Balance the areas of your life, and you’ll lead a full life.