College is a super stressful time for everyone. At the beginning of the semester, we all have our ideas about how the semester will turn out and usually things turn a complete 180 by the end of it. I was talking about this to some friends in my Spanish class and I compared it to a notebook. Hear me out: at the beginning of the semester, you bought a new spiral notebook. You begin to take notes in this notebook for a class. You highlight key words, underline things you have questions about, make little side notes. At this point you're doing good, feeling confident. 8 weeks pass and then your notes slowly drift away from what they once were. You no longer highlight as many keywords, you barely underline anything, your notebook is starting to fall apart. Somehow your handwriting starts to get sloppy because you're slowly losing your motivation. Then by the end of the semester, your notebook is literally disintegrating, your notes are horrible and you're just praying that you'll pass all of your tests from the horrible notes that you've taken. Do you understand this struggle?

Lately, I've been dealing with a lot with my classes; lots of projects, presentations, and tests. I think one of the most stressful things is planning for your summer and intersession classes if you decide to take any or just the planning of the next semester. I usually love planning things, but when it comes to my classes and it's a couple of months away, it can be stressful. I tend to overthink things. like "what is the professor like?", "What is the homework like?", "How many tests are there in a semester?", "How are the points in this class divided into categories?" like I think about literally everything else almost except the subject.

For example, I woke up to an email the other day about one of my summer classes being canceled because of the low enrollment of students. I've been enrolled and have planned on taking this class since November so I was kind of annoyed when I found this out because I obviously need this class and I had to figure out something else in my schedule. I was emailing my advisor many, many times kind of freaking out about this because it would put me behind. But he ended up finding another class that I also need and it's a music class. So through all of my stress and worries, this new plan of my schedule will probably work out better than the original. And the music class is online, so yay! This example is a huge reminder for me just to keep faith in God because he knows my plan even when I don't. I haven't been reading or studying the bible as much as I should. (It's sitting on my desk slowly collecting dust.) But I say all the time to people that I don't have time for pleasure reading because I'm doing too much textbook reading. And that's 100% true. But if I can find 10-20 minutes at the end of my day to just sit, think, and reflect I think I would be far better off.

Here are some verses I found for the stressed and anxious college student:

Psalm 139:14

"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made."

Psalm 46:5

"God is within her, she will not fail."

Proverbs 31:25

"She is clothed in strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future."

Luke 12:22-23

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes."

Romans 8:28

"And we know that those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose."

Proverbs 3:6-7

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your path straight."