With a full year of Mines under my belt, I felt ready to tackle my next challenge, sophomore year and living on my own for the first time. Well I guess dorm life is kinda of like being on your own but not really. You get meals provided, you don't pay for utilities, your bathroom and living spaces cleaned by someone else, you get the point. My suite-mates and I decided it would be good to move off campus and find an apartment together. There were originally five of us. Housing around Golden was pretty tight, so it was like a marathon effort to find a place to stay.
After a few months of looking, my parents decided it made more sense to buy a condo in Golden. This added one more thing to my plate, house maintenance. Early on, this was a daunting task, but through the help of my parents I was able to learn how to properly take care of a house. With that set, I moved on to getting my roommates to sign a lease. This proved to be a difficult task. One signed right away, another after a few questions, one decided he wanted to drop out of signing the lease, and the last was marooned at a Boy Scout Camp with very little communication.The first step was finding someone else to fill the void left by the roommate who left. Enter Craigslist. Let me tell you what, Craigslist is not the greatest place on Earth to be looking for a normal roommate. First there was a 40 year old man insisting that he had his own bathroom, then there was a 35 year old "Mines" student who spoke very little English. Then the woman's track and field assistant coach walked in. She was polite, quite and was willing to move into a house with four other college boys. With that, we offered her a lease and she signed immediately. Finally, after months of work, the house was finally full.
With the first week of school approaching, I asked everyone what classes they were taking and what their schedule looked like. Well, they had actually decided to drop out of Mines and work a job instead. So now instead of four students in the house, we had two students and three people who were working. This proved to make studying and doing homework very difficult when a majority of the house was relaxing without you. Still the two of us persevered and became very good friends because of it.
School was just as hard as it had always been. Tons of homework, ridiculously long nights studying for exams, and many many many cups of coffee over the year. However, this was the year I was able to really get into classes that were major specific and it guided me to declare my major, Electrical Engineering.
Finally, my track and field coach roommate encouraged me to try out for the Mines Club Baseball Team and that was the best decision I ever made while I was at Mines. It gave me an outlet, a way to take my mind of the grueling schoolwork I had to do. In my first year on the team, we went to the national tournament in Paducah, Kentucky. Over the course of the season, I played on one of the best teams I ever was a part of. Great teammates, even better friends.
My final bit of advice, if you are feeling stressed out about school, you need to find an outlet, a club, a sport, a support group of people who you can do something other than school. It will clear your mind and make you more refreshed for those long hours of studying.
