It's only the third week of school and I'm already trying to decide if I want to be stripper, a drug dealer, or where I want to set up my nice cardboard box.I'm literally swimming in quizzes, essays, projects and whatever else you can think of and they're all due within the next two seconds. The crazy part about all this is that I'm currently in what my teacher likes to call a "success" class. Basically, I meet with her and other students that are failing at life once a week and we discuss different ways to manage time and juggle everything we have going on in life. Sounds like a great tool to help an incoming freshman right? Wrong!

One thing you should know is that I'm a junior. The second thing that you should know is that this woman has given me just as much work as any other teacher, which defeats the purpose of helping manage work. Now if you are in high school or a freshman and you're reading this, you might think that I'm sad and pathetic for being in college for three years and still don’t know how to manage my time and work. Well when you complete your first semester, read this article again and I promise you are going to feel every word in your soul. (Or at least that first sentence.)

Adjusting to college is more than just trying to get used to eating Ramen noodles on a daily basis and figuring out what a "syllabus" is. For every person it's different. Depending on what it is, what resources you have, and just what kind of person you are determines just how long it'll take you to adjust. So that you understand why I'm still struggling, I'm going to take you guys back to a couple weeks before starting my freshman year. My world turned upside down and forever changed when I found out my mom had breast cancer. Right then and there, my world just stopped and I was not ready to press start any time soon. When I found this out, I didn’t want to go off to college anymore, I wanted to stay home and go to a local college so I could take care of her.

My mom forced me (almost kicking and screaming) to go where I had originally planned to go. Now that I look back on it, I'm glad she did. Had she not, I wouldn’t have met my best friend, Titiana, my great friend Ada or any of the other many great people I have in my life now. My first year, I spent every weekend driving home to be with my mom. Of course, you can imagine between packing, driving, running errands, having mental breakdowns and then driving back to school all within two days, I didn’t get much homework done. At school, I constantly walked around thinking about my mom and if she was alright. In turn, that meant I wasn’t focusing at all. I see this as nobody's fault, just a factor in my life that affected me tremendously. Quite frankly, I didn’t know how to deal with it, and I'm not going to lie, I still don't.

My sophomore year was a little better, but not much. My mom was doing better but then I discovered the wonderful world of apartments. I know what you're thinking. No more cramped dorm rooms, no more RA's, goodbye Ramen noodles and hello private bathroom. This was all true. My apartment was one of the best things that could've ever happened to me except for one thing, it turned me into a hermit crab. I literally went to class and came back to my apartment. The exception, going to work, was just another obstacle in adjusting. I did nothing on campus, I barely saw my friends, and I went nowhere.

Not having to deal with people was such a big relief that Ijust stayed in my room unless I was going to work. The problem with staying in your room is that nine times out of ten you're in the bed and you’re not getting anything accomplished. If you are it's not very much, even when you think it is. Also being at work until 10:30 or 11:00 at night five times a week doesn’t help. To sum it all up, I wasn’t going to the library, I wasn’t involved with anything on campus and I wasn’t focused (again).

Now, we've reached my junior year. My mom is doing pretty well, I only work on the weekends. To be honest, this professor that teaches my success class has actually given me some pretty good tips on how to manage my time. I actually bought a planner, so I guess I'll use it and I make myself go to the library when I have free time. (Of course, I would rather be sleeping.) It's only the third week and things are still a little crazy. I haven't had a lot of time to apply the other new tips and get used to my rearranged life. However, I think that this year might be my year. Put this thought in your head and ask yourself, is third times a charm actually true?