I've heard lots of adults, family and friends laugh when I say "I'm tired, exhausted, stressed and done." They reply with "What do you have to be worried, stressed, or tired about? You're just a kid." Most of us college students are first generation and we have heard this more than we care to admit. It's true, yes, college isn't rocket science (unless you're majoring in it) but it still takes quite a toll. The time and money it takes alone could blow someone's mind. College however, isn't just about paying your dues and showing up to class, it's so much more.
Money
The cost in today's higher education system can range from $9,139 to $31,231 a year, but most cost even more. For me, one year cost about $42,000 because I go to a private Catholic Marianist university. How can someone afford this if they're a first gen? It's simple. I can't. I have loans, almost everyone I know has loans. Loans in themselves are stressful, which ones do you get? How do you apply? How much do you ask for? How do you pay it back? and when do you pay it back? These things are constantly being asked by many students, both upper and lowerclassmen.
Time
Eighteen hours is full time, and most scholarships require that you are a full time student. Okay, but back to money, you don't want five loans so most of us have a job. In fact most of us have two, if not three. We do these 18 school hours every week then go to work at our 1+ many jobs. After we go to work we come home, study, eat, and if we're lucky, we sleep.
Exhaustion
After the questions, the worries, being on our feet all day and trying to manage work, school and sleep we crash. We become physically and mentally exhausted. We've all had the day where we're so happy just to finally sit down, then we remember "ugh I need to study for _____" and we pull out our books and study. Except we can't. We read and reread something 5+ times and yet don't remember what we just read because all we can think about is the 1,000 other things we have to do before the next day.
We forget to eat because we're too busy, we forget to sleep because something is due at 8am and it's midnight and all you have is a blank page. After a while we stop and say "I'm done!" We can't take it anymore so we give up. We try to take study breaks but it didn't work. So after everything you except the zero and fall into sleep.
The next day were upset because we didn't finish the assignment. We got a zero. Now what? Now we start all over again except now we have more stress and we're worried because now we don't know if our choices effects till later on. So after days, and weeks of this same process we go home and hear "What do you have to be worried, stressed, or tired about? Your just a kid." Except we're not kids. We are depending on ourselves to get through. We have to believe that after all this we will pass because if we don't then the loans, the 1+ jobs, the sleepless nights and stress were for nothing. Now, to all the "What do you have to be worried, stressed, or tired about? You're just a kid." people: What do you have to be worried about? You're not a college student.
