Column By J1 Reporter Brianna Wessling

It’s a Wednesday morning.

The first half of the school week is over and I’m ready to power through until the end. My Tuesday night was, as per usual, awful. After slacking off on Monday, and then working until 10 p.m. on Tuesday, I’m ready to tell the painful story of my night without holding anything back, making sure to lay on every painstaking detail.

Work was awful (yet another customer did yet another ridiculous thing and I had to stay late, again), homework kept me up until 3 a.m., and I slept through my alarm, forcing myself to get rush to get ready and co

me to school. To top it all off, instead of parking in upper lot, I was lucky enough to snag a coveted
spot in sophomore lot. All of your average, everyday disasters came together to create the absolute worst night, and morning, for yours truly.

As I’m finishing up my tale of woe, someone else speaks up. My friend across the table launches into her own sad story of how horrible her boss was, how she got into a fight with her parents, and didn’t end up getting any sleep at all.

That is how the battle begins.

It’s easy to tell that the gauntlet has been thrown down. I retaliate to her story by adding in a few more of the gross details of my night, but at each point I’m topped. No matter what, someone else had to stay up a little later, had just a little bit more stress, and was just a little bit more miserable than I was.

Eventually I’m forced to throw in the towel and admit defeat. While the rest of the table may still feel sorry for me, I’ve officially lost the competition for the most miserable person.

Throughout this entire interaction, I never once ask myself why I feel the need to compete like this. Why do we all feel like in order for our problems to be legitimate, they have to be worse than everyone else’s? Shouldn’t we just accept the simple truth that everyone has their own problems?

This constant competition makes it hard for us to relate to each other and makes some of us less open to talking about our problems. Everyone has her bad nights, so why not just be there for each other when we do have them. In the end, we all need an empathetic friend who we can rant to on what we think are our worst days.