One must imagine Sisyphus' Heart is in the work
The gods have commanded Carnegie Mellon students to ceaselessly start and submit assignments, only for more notifications to appear on Canvas at the end of the day. They found no crueller punishment for the students’ hubris than this dreadful, repetitive task. There are many varying accounts for why the students are being punished in this manner. Some spent time on r/ Applying2College in high school, others applied to make their parents love them, and one or two even “really like the school” and “wanna follow their dreams”.
You have already grasped that the Carnegie Mellon student is an absurd character. Their desire to make something of themselves, concluding in this toiling, repetitive labor, makes this situation almost comical. Eternally they struggle through the milestones of the academic calendar, stopping briefly only to rest during school breaks before continuing again. Yet, it is this pause that interests me. Surely, someone so embroiled in their academic schedule cannot have a life. The several weeks of break are merely a mechanism which the student must use to sign up for more classes and apply for more internships. Inevitably, the semester starts again, and the student continues their infinite loop of panicking and bitching.
But if one observes the absurd nature of their situation, an interesting corollary to despair forms. There is no amount of suffering that cannot be overcome by scorn; the CMU student, realizing that they have free will, understands that they can relish their situation by making extremely original jokes about how they want to drop out. Each unfortunate midterm and all-nighter, in itself, forms a world. It’s all just really fucking funny. The CMU student survives because they realize the absurdity of their situation. One must imagine the CMU student happy; one must imagine their heart is in the work.