College isn't always easy. Ask any student putting in the effort to succeed in their classes. But success is unfortunately not defined as gaining knowledge by every professor. Sure, they may tell you that. What they really base your academic success on are the hurdles the would like you to jump. These hurdles can vary from things as simple as in-class assignments to the dreaded essays and presentations. In theory, these hurdles utilize the information you are supposed to gain from the course.

Most, but not all students, learn to work smarter instead of harder. They learn to find the loopholes in the assignments. Mainly, this consists of only finding the information necessary to get the grade. This method cuts out hours of work. Which, for a college student, is gold.

As a college kid, you stop measuring time in days and start measuring in due dates.

Juggling work, academics, and socializing can be difficult. There is always fear of spending too much time with one of the three, allowing another to drop.

Let's rephrase. Professors like to keep you in a box. It's not because you've done anything wrong. This is all about convenience. They are given an amount of areas to teach in a small amount of time. To make sure they cover their bases, much of the time needed to complete assignments and gain anything from the course is outside of the classroom. What they don't seem to prepare for, is that there are other classes you are taking. Sure the hours needed for one class or maybe even a few, are easy to handle. But when you have five or six? Your day goes something like this:

Get up and get ready. Simple. Get to your 8 am on time. Okay, not so bad. Head to your next classes. Sure, that's fine. Find time for lunch. Easier said than done. Finish your classes for the day. Whew. Go to work. Got to pay the bills, right? Find time to eat dinner. That's a great time to find your sanity while you're at it. Maybe look over class notes or check what your homework is. That's not hard to do while eating a sandwich. Go to your dorm and finish the assignments that are due, starting with the closest due date. Glad that's over. Go to the library and study for that math test you barely understand. If you finish that by 9 o'clock, you didn't study enough. Meet up with friends? Don't really have time but you should try and relieve some stress. Maybe go back to the dorm and watch a movie? Next thing you know, its 2 am and you're about to go to bed. Wait? Did you turn in that assignment due before 9 am? Better check and make sure.

By the time you can actually shut your eyes and get a decent rest, your alarm clock goes off and you start it all over again.

That was exhausting to write. It may seem like an exaggeration but its more realistic than you'd think. The only way to get everything done and keep your sanity is to cut corners where you can. Usually, this means giving 110% to completing assignments with only the necessary and required work. Anything more will eat into your lunch period or your sleep.

When you get stuck in this cycle of only doing the necessary, you forget the art of creativity.

You forget how to put all that knowledge into your memory instead of putting it on the test and erasing the data. You feel tired and overwhelmed. Coming up with ideas for projects turns into recreating something you've done before. You use templates you've overused. It becomes boring and monotonous.

Figuring out that you've been placed in the college box is some sort of shell shock experience. When the majority of your professors want you to just check all the boxes, you lose your ability to creatively think. But it's difficult to know this until one professor is practically shouting out "USE CREATIVITY!"

This sort of thing happened to me recently. As I headed out of my mathematics course, I knew I needed to as my English professor to look over my rough draft. I don't boast about much; my writing skills are the humble exception. When I sat down, he started spewing ideas and questions on where I was going with my paper. It's on foot binding in ancient China, so the topic is pretty straight forward.

I was not put into the College Box. I'm creative. Right? Then I realized, I had put myself into this Box.

I was so focused on getting the grades I need to keep scholarships and succeed in the classes, that I started doing only what was necessary and not thinking or acting in a creative way.

There I was, sitting in my professors' office, coming to this conclusion and not being able to come up with an answer for his questions on foot binding. I had put in all the work. I found sources and turned in my annotated bibliography on time. I wrote paragraphs that had all the information necessary. Where had I gone wrong?

I was then informed that my creativity had dwindled. Not through his words. Not through mine. But I knew. Now I've got to find a way to climb out of the box. My creativity deserves that much.