Reflections on first day of Ramadan

I was nervous about this Ramadan starting. I want to take advantage of the added blessings of this month, participate in the nightly prayers, and read qur'an daily. At the same time, school is very demanding. I'm in class all day on most days and then I'm expected to come home and memorize a large volume of material. There's a couple of classes that I worry regularly about passing.

Although it's possible, I find it really hard to be productive when I'm fasting. It doesn't help that I've been addicted to coffee since the age of 15, nor does it help that the vast majority of muslims on my campus feel that being students of the health professions exempts them from fasting. So I'm artfully trying to rearrange my schedule to maximize efficiency. I know what my limits are so before Ramadan I focused on my two hardest classes and tried to get ahead as I can. I figured I can do the lighter studying while I'm fasting. The result of that is that I got a little behind in all of the other classes.

So on the night before Ramadan I stayed up as late as I could to "study", I ended up spending half that time or more on facebook. I slept in late and dragged myself to the library in the afternoon where I shared a study room with Persian Princess and another friend. They had gotten there a few hours ahead of me and I just kept complaining to them about how I can't study. I barely studied 6 pages of immunology and left the library early...still complaining. I was invited for iftaar and afterwards we went all went and prayed. I bumped into one of the dental students and we got carried away in conversation and eventually told to "be quiet or get out". I was happy that I got to pray at the masjid but I knew it's something I'm not going to be able to do regularly.

I came back to the hotel around midnight and Persian princess was sleeping. I stayed up again to "study" and slept in. I went to the library late into the afternoon and only checked one thing off my study list before I was falling asleep on the table. So I said "goodbye I need a nap" and all 3 friends I was studying with expressed that they're worried about me. They said I'm not studying enough and I'm going to fall behind and have panic attacks like I did last year. That made me get just a tad bit defensive as I reminded them how I'm ahead of all of them in optics.

Yea, I'm worried about me too and decided that tonight I'm skipping the masjid and praying on my own so that I can go to the library instead. I'm also considering skipping iftar with friends. Neither of those things are fard and I just simply must accept my circumstances and do what I have to do.

Ramadan Kareem to all!