In the hectic lives of college students, exacerbated by the quarter system, unnecessary interruptions are, at best, framed as minor inconveniences. The experience of having a common cold, one of these minor inconveniences, gives us a window into how college students, and subsequently working adults, prioritize productivity above all. From this window, we see just how entrenched our everyday choices reinforce and are affected by the systems we occupy.
Serious conditions, illnesses, and life-changing diagnoses are often the center of attention when it comes to medical experiences. Their stories captivate us through the jarring changes that they induce in people’s lives. Rhetoric around illness that includes words like ‘battle’ and ‘overcame’, however, does not exactly apply to the common cold. Why is that so?
Due to the hegemonic control over university/work life that productivity culture has, the common cold (itself not a discrete, diagnosable illness) is socially constructed to be perceived as insignificant and easily worked through; the common cold is not allowed to disrupt our daily work-academic routines because that would threaten the narrative that our human value is tied to economic value.
Defining the common cold felt like a deceptively simple task. The common cold is not a specific disease, but a syndrome of mild respiratory illness symptoms. Ronald Eccles, former director of the Common Cold Center at Cardiff University, defines the cold as “more of a cultural concept rather than a clinical entity, as the disease is usually self-diagnosed and treated.”
Even though it is framed as an implicitly “mild” illness, the common cold can be dangerous, and trying to work despite being infected by it can put ourselves and others in danger. A common cold can develop into a severe respiratory illness, such as pneumonia or bronchitis, if not carefully monitored, according to Eccles. Vulnerable groups of people, like the elderly, infants, and immunocompromised individuals, are at greatest risk. But even though it is dangerous to push through work when we are ill, it is something we are often compelled to do to make ends meet, putting everyone at risk.
As equally dangerous, if not more so due to its persistence, is the normalization of suffering. Isolation, congestion, fever, and headaches are things we would all want to avoid. Yet, when we tie suffering to continued productivity, we derive satisfaction from being able to push through. We learn to accept or ignore physical, social, and mental deficiencies that would typically stop us, all starting with the mild and innocent common cold.
Haifa, a pre-medical student at UCLA, seldom falls ill. With a goal of becoming a dermatologist, her daily agenda is filled to the brim with classes, extracurriculars, and internships. This is not unique to Haifa; productivity culture dominates the campus, making all our lives constantly busy. However, when she does experience common cold symptoms, she manages them herself.
“I usually like walking and getting my steps in, but it was like really hard to even walk, honestly,”
said Haifa, who prides herself on staying active with UCLA’s infamous hilly terrain.
With the common cold, however, what she once looked forward to quickly became a mountain of dread. With nostrils caving in from the congestion, getting to and from class tested her mettle. When she could spare time from studying, Haifa focuses her efforts on recovery by resting as aggressively as possible, sleeping in, and taking medication. However, as a pre-med student, she’s looking at STEM classes with two midterms and a final. She can’t afford to take the full break she needs. “I feel like I have the mindset of, ‘Oh, I’m not accomplishing anything. I’m going to get behind,” she said.
The severe fatigue that comes from the common cold is not unheard of. But her body was asking her to pump the brakes. How could she when she felt her best was when she was studying, volunteering, and socializing? They all depend on her vigorous energy, which requires a healthy body.
When asked what she took for granted when she was sick, Haifa paused before concluding, “I just realized, damn, like this is [what] literally no energy feels like, and I’m happy I have enough energy to get through the day.”
The frequent episodes of the common cold that we experience often blur with our memories. Due to its frequency and manageability, the common cold turns into white noise. We may forget how often we ask others for forgiveness when we fall ill, the source of inconvenience being the person instead of the fact that we need to rest. The moment we stop being useful is the moment fear starts to settle in. Perhaps we’ll get replaced, lose trust, or seem soft?
The common cold has revolutionary potential to change our perception of our time use, health, and the larger systems that bear on us. Attempting to organize the almost invisible effects of a cold in the grand scheme of college life revealed to me how little importance we attach to the experience. What differentiates this syndrome from ‘serious’ illness is beyond severity. It’s how institutions deem what kind of pain gets acknowledged and which doesn’t. In a world in which even minor illnesses get acknowledged for a break, the only thing that would suffer would be our output. What is more important than our health? Haifa’s experience testifies to the fact that we need a healthy body to achieve all that is important to us. And yet, we feel compelled to accept sickness as part of what it means to be successful.
The common cold demonstrates a type of suffering in which the body politely asks for recovery without resorting to a dramatic performance. Far too often, we have trained ourselves to ignore the body's pleas until the symptoms become worse. Until we cannot bear to continue, we rely on medicines to stave off the worst. Only when illness interrupts our productivity do we begin to address our health.