The educational component of college is enough to stress everyone out to the MAX from time-to-time…or all the time if you are anything like me. Trying to balance homework assignments, textbook readings, studying, group projects, and exams can be a real struggle.

As if all of that was not stressful enough, you are likely to experience one, if not all three, of the following non-educational stressors during your time in college:

1. Waiting in absurd lines for coffee

From personal experience, I know that waiting in an absurdly long line at Starbucks before your 10:30 a.m. lecture can be unexpectedly stressful. Before even leaving to start your day, you do your best to factor in enough time to get your Grande White Chocolate Mocha while still making it to class in plenty of time to get your usual seat. To your dismay, you get to Starbucks, and the line is full of students attempting to jump-start their day just like you. You come here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and rarely have this issue. Where did all of these strangers come from?

You question even getting a drink at all and then laugh at yourself for thinking such a ridiculous thought. Once you have ordered and paid for your drink, you check your watch and realize that time has passed too quickly. You are likely going to be late, and being late means walking into class and drawing everyone’s attention to yourself. Absolutely not. You already paid for your drink, though, so you don’t want to waste the little money that you have as a college student. So, you wait, hear the barista shout your improperly-spelled name, and bolt to class. Phew, what an unnecessarily stressful start to the day.

2. Having a class in a building that you’ve never been

Thankfully, this non-educational stressor is usually only experienced at the beginning of a semester. This does not take away from the fact that having a class in a building that you’ve never been in before can be very nerve-wracking. First things first, you have to make sure you get to the desired building. If your school is anything like mine, you have an app on your phone that shows a map of the campus and a little blue dot representative of your location. You watch the dot move as you walk in, what you believe is, the right direction. Your blue dot has arrived to the correct building, so you walk in and hope for the best. Your class is in room 348.

Alright, no elevator in sight, therefore you must begin the climb up three flights of stairs. Once at the top, you heave for breath as you now try to locate your exact classroom. You can either go to the left or to the right down a hallway, and upon going right, you realize you should’ve gone left. You’re already walking now, though, and you do not want to do a 180-degree turn and give off the impression you don’t know where you are going. So, you continue walking down the hallway that forms a big square and eventually gets you to the classroom that you needed to find.

3. Finding a spot in the library

Whether your college campus be big or small, finding a place to sit in the library can be pretty tricky. Don’t even get me started on Finals Week, a.k.a. the week that non-traditional library-goers crawl out of nowhere and take up all the seats in the library. Regardless, even on a typical day, spots in the library are a hot commodity. You walk into the library with a backpack that is about to break your back. You don’t see any spots when you immediately walk in, so you start casually walking while scanning for an open table, desk, or whatever you can temporarily claim as yours.

Perfect! There is a great spot. Go, go, go! NO. Someone else beat you there. That’s alright, you see another spot a little further away. You pop a squat, get out your laptop and…oh no. Your laptop only has 15%, and the odds of finding a decent spot AND a nearby outlet is just out of the question. Naturally, you just pack up all of your things and head back to your room/apartment/home. Better luck next time on the whole “homework” thing, right?