I was equally excited and scared to come back for my third year at UCLA. First of all, I missed UCLA.

I know that I had spent my summer here but those two weeks of break I had was sufficient enough to remind me how much I love my college life.

Yes, I am that person who loves my university insanely. Deal with it.

Second of all, I was coming back for my junior year which is supposed to the hardest year of your college experience. Junior year of high school was hell and I am fully expecting the same and worse for my junior year of college.

Third of all, on top of it being my junior year, it is the first time I have ever lived in an apartment without my parents which was going to be a challenge in itself.

So, as I flew back in, I was ready to be faced with so many stressful situations and I wasn't wrong.

But I did not expect how nice it felt to be in an apartment, how nice it felt to have a goal that I am working towards after college even thought that is daunting most of the time, and how good it feels to be back to the grind.

To be fair, if that last sentence sounded crazy, this might just me being unable to function correctly without stress but that is another issue altogether. We can only unpack so much in one article.

Being a junior means choosing my upper-division classes and having the freedom of choosing the classes that I want in my major. Yes, all my classes are way harder than they have ever been but I chose all of them so it is really not something that I can complain about too much. It also means more responsibilities in the clubs and organizations that I have been a part of and making sure to show up and do the work because others are looking up to my work ethic.

Being in an apartment means that my time management skills, no matter how poor they were, needs to be way better than they have ever been if I want to succeed in my academic life and be able to eat correctly and sleep on time. It means that I can make the meals I want but the dishes that I have to clean are exponentially increasing by the day. It shows me that laundry isn't the only adulting that exists but cleaning the bathroom is something I can't procrastinate on.

The friendships that you make in college undergo transformations every semester but from now on, since you are more on campus and you don't have meal plans, there is another transformation on the way and I am excited and terrified to see how this ends up changing the relationships that I already have and the ones that I have yet to make.

All in all, adulting is a part of life and if I didn't do it now, I probably would have to do it eventually. Starting now just gives me more experience to make mistakes and learn from them.