I know we are only a few weeks in, but this spring semester has been a busy and stressful one, so far. I am the type of person who tries to do as many things as possible at one time, and I tend to have way too many things on my plate. I try to be the ultimate multi-tasker, so I decided to enroll in 19 hours, work three jobs, and attempt to maintain my sanity all while trying to graduate a semester early to save money. I was so overwhelmed, just in the first week, that I could not sleep at night -- which is pretty typical for me. I was talking to my sister about how stressed I was and all of a sudden she cut me off and said, “Is it even worth it?”

I was silent because I had not given it much thought. I was so consumed by my hectic schedule that I did not even realize how frazzled I was. I had a super long phone call with my parents to discuss my course load and figure out a plan for the rest of the semester, because I was going to be miserable if I did not make any changes. I ended up dropping one of my classes to bring me down to 16 hours, so that I would actually have some time to relax. Up until then, when I rarely had downtime to chill out, I was not even fully relaxed because I could not stop thinking about all of the things I had to do. When I was with friends, I was hyper-focused on schoolwork I could be doing instead. When I was trying to go to sleep, I convinced myself that sleeping was merely a waste of time. 

I needed someone to knock some sense into me and force me to realize that I was going to become insane by the end of the semester if I kept up this mentality. Working hard and trying to be proactive can only get you so far until it becomes counterproductive. My parents gave me some pretty good advice after about 30 minutes on the phone: college is obviously about the grades, but it is also about the experience and friendships you make during those years. I had the whole grades and work ethic aspect of college down, but I needed to focus more on relaxing and making memories with my friends. When I am older and thinking about my past college experience, I want to have amazing memories and experiences to look back on. 

Like I said, grades are important and school will always come first, but having a great college experience is not only about the school aspect of it. Now that things have calmed down a bit, and I have lightened up my course schedule, I have more chances to enjoy free time and not be so stressed out every minute of the day.