“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.”
This was a quote by Sydney J. Harris.
With a resting heart rate of 90 beats per minute, type A personality and becoming a sophomore in college, your stress levels tend to rise a bit more frequently than “normal”. Some would say that a full workload of 18 credits, part-time job, internship, sorority priorities, and even living with 60 other women etc. could be a tad bit overwhelming, and let me tell you, at times it sure does. It’s only the sixth week into the semester, and with a few mental breakdowns here and there, I can honestly tell you that I’ve never been happier. If there is anything that keeps me going throughout each and every day, it would be the determination that I was raised to have, to deal with the stress that I willingly brought upon myself, to keep pushing me to do my best.
I have always had high-stress levels growing up, whether it was my tenacious personality, or school, or situations at home, I honestly couldn’t tell you. I maintained a 4.0 GPA in high school in order to have the opportunity to attend Washington State University with scholarships and grants in the fall of 2015.
Freshman year of college hit me like a bus. Sorority recruitment, genetics major, full-time job, out of state, first generation student. It was all so overwhelming. They definitely don’t prepare you for college your senior year of high school, and being as unprepared as I was, and not having anyone I knew to guide me through it all caused me a bit of stress. This is why I can’t stress enough to the freshman each year how important school is. It is not like your senior year of high school, where your graduating class of 12 seniors all had amazing GPAs. College is hard, and you have to work your butt off trying to be something when you attend a school with 30,000 other students. Being a sophomore this year, and helplessly watching the freshman struggle gives me more than just nostalgia, because nothing is more difficult than enduring the sophomore slump.
The “sophomore slump” is what most undergraduates like to call the hardest year of college. Most sophomores obtain a job, receive a little, start major classes, and apply for internships all within the first semester. Fall especially, is the hardest semester, in my opinion. As I said previously, it’s only the 6th week, and my stress levels are out of this world. Granted, I probably bit off more than I could chew, majoring in Genetics plus all my extracurricular activities, but like I said, I couldn’t be happier.
I’m still new at this whole ‘college’ thing, so I don’t have much advice on how to deal with the overwhelming aspects of being an undergraduate. However, I can genuinely say that I wouldn’t trade these years for anything, and you shouldn’t either. Your undergraduate years are such a limited amount of your life, and probably the best time of your life at that. I constantly have alumni drunkenly divulge all this (what seems like nonsense) talk about how “college is the best…” “It goes by so fast…”, but when I returned to WSU from Idaho this fall and saw my peers graduate/grow up, what I felt was verbatim to what the alumni were constantly saying. Why do you think they all come back every weekend? To relive the BEST years of their lives. They went to WSU to be happy, earn a degree, and focus on themselves.
It’s hard for many freshmen, including myself (when I was one), to leave home to a completely new social milieu and not become anxious and stressed. That stress, however, isn’t an unbearable kind, every single student on campus feels the same way you do. You’re here for a reason, whether it’s to better yourself or to provide for your family, this meager 4 percent of your late teens-early twenties defines the rest of your life. When you're in a slump, just remember that one day you’ll miss all of this. You won’t remember the stressful times, you’ll miss the good times. You can get through it. These years mean the most. Gotta get through the week to enjoy your weekend.
