Take a deep breath. Feels good, doesn’t it? Midterms are finally over. You no longer have the feeling in the bottom of your stomach that if you stop studying, you will either be eaten alive by a pack of hungry wolves or disowned by your parents and friends because you failed your test (I’d personally take the wolves).With a few seconds to reflect on a hellish couple of weeks, I wanted to try assessing why we are doing all this work. Is this just the way we are going to live our lives – in a never-ending dash from here to there?Teachers assign more work than we can possibly do, especially if we also engage in meaningful clubs, jobs and internships – the kinds of things everyone tells us we have to do to get ahead. Fifteen credit hours translates to a 60-hour work week. Add 20 hours of extracurriculars and you have an 80-hour week. College is starting to feel more like a test of my threshold of pain than a learning experience. If this mad dash were to end in college, no one would complain, but we are expected to go on like this until we are about 70.Exasperated, I decided I would speak with David Hyde, who teaches a seminar on stress and is the undergraduate program coordinator for the Department of Public and Community Health. I was wondering how much work is humanly possible if we are to live healthy lives.I was convinced all this stress, the overeating, the lack of sleep and the lack of exercise could not be good for our health. Yet according to Hyde, the effects of this stress and these four years of craziness will not have long-term health effects – it would take a decade or so to have real effects.I then asked Hyde if he thought college students are overworked. Going in, I was hoping he would tell me we are doing twice as much work as is good for us. I wanted an expert opinion showing teachers should give us less work, no tests and hot chocolate when we get to class.A second best would be enough time to learn the material. Being reasonable, Hyde put my worry in perspective: He told me we are going to college to prepare for a career, and it takes work to be prepared. With that in mind, many of us try to take on too many tasks, not leaving enough time in the day for ourselves.So although many of us do try to extend ourselves too far, there are some things we can do to alleviate this stress. Hyde’s two tips were to keep a daytime planner and to spend an hour a day doing something you really enjoy. This will show you how you spend your time during the normal course of a day and will give you a little time to rejuvenate and stay happy. As far as all the work, that is more or less a part of American life.While I am very thankful for Hyde’s expert counseling, I am having trouble accepting this larger implication – the idea that if you want to be successful in the university and American society, you will only have an hour a day to yourself. So that leaves a deeper question: What are we living our lives for? Is it the money, power and prestige?Are we all economic humans running around trying to satisfy preferences? Is it just reproduction of the species? Whatever plausible answer you come to, chances are you won’t be satisfied with one free hour of living a day. Does it have to be like this? Can we save more and retire earlier? Can we legislate a shorter work week?The work week has huge effects on us all, and we should be talking about whether these are the kinds of lives we want to live. Do not let circumstances dictate your life – take control of your freedom and discuss alternatives.A.J. Burton is a junior government and politics major. He can be reached at ajburton@umd.edu.