So it's a month before classes start in fall. You're thinking about selling all of your appendages and researching what organs you can live without just to pay for your dorm stuff and books, never mind tuition. Whether or not your father is Bill Gates, you will still be stressed about money and figuring out how to pay for all of these never ending costs (okay, maybe not if your dad is Bill Gates). Of course, there are different ways to get help financially and to temporarily make it possible to attend college. There is FAFSA which is either a blessing or a curse depending on how much your family makes in a year. If your family rakes in a fair amount of money, there's a good chance you'll get about 27 cents from the government. Other than that, they are helpful.

So after you deduct the 27 cents from your college tuition, you are left with an exceptional debt to pay. So we take out loans and basically just put off the debt until we stop attending school. Sound easy, right? WRONG. Taking out a loan is INCREDIBLY stressful. As if dealing with $40,000-$60,000 bills wasn't enough, they need to make it harder. We need to find a financial lender with a relatively low-interest rate, figure out how much we need to take out and genuinely just hope for the best. When we get our bills in the mail in late July, that's when we find out whether or not we took out enough or whether we need to just sell ourselves to pay for the rest because we screwed up somewhere along the way...which is also pretty easy. Filling out oodles and oodles of paperwork makes you bob back and forth between wanting to rip your hair and sobbing in the corner. So when you do get the bill in the mail, you almost immediately just want to put it off and hope to god the billing gods don't find you (but they will because they do have ALL of your information. They even know how your goldfish died when you were in fourth grade and if only your goldfish had $100,000 insurance policy.)

So before you are ready to just give up, fear not college students! Email financial aid at your school (they really can be helpful, they aren't as scary as they sound). Chill out because believe it or not freaking out is going to accomplish just about nothing. Most importantly, though, you are NOT alone! You will figure this out and please for the love of god stop putting it off before it does become too late. Trying to pay for the semester the day before classes start is not okay. Good luck fellow already-stressed-out college students!