There isn’t enough time.

The older I get, the busier my life seems to become. I’m 20 years old and everyday, I'm learning to “adult” as we millennials say. This whole process of growing up is so incredible and exciting, but at the same time – it’s so damn stressful. (Sorry for cussing mom and dad.)

I am so thankful for my family and all they do for me, I wouldn’t be the (somewhat) sane young lady that I am today if it weren’t for them. They take care of so many of my expenses, many that a lot of my fellow colleagues have to pay on their own. But even with their help and support, the stress still manages to pile up. Maybe it’s my own overachieving personality, or the fast paceness that America is today, but it always seems like there is something to do, someone to see, or something to work on.

Being a college student is hard. There are many expectations of us from our family, our professors, and society in general. It’s so tough to balance it all, and try to figure out our own lives at the same time. These people ask so much from us, but also want to see us succeed at the same time. It’s hard to keep everyone happy, including ourselves, and sometimes we just “can’t even.”

I am just one voice out of many, accounting for all of the other stressed out college students in the world.

Dear Family,

We love you. We are thankful for you. We know on our own, and because you guys are always reminding us, “You’re never home. You never make time for us anymore.” Well folks, as bizarre as it may seem, we are well aware of this. Because we live away from home, it takes time to pack up a bag for a night or two and drive home. We really do want to see you, but it just takes up a lot of time. This is time that we also have to divide between schoolwork, our friends (because we kinda do need a social life), our jobs, and sleep. Yes, we do need sleep, and we need a lot more of it than what we are currently getting. But for fun, let’s say that we do actually go home and see you guys. We have dinner and hang out, talk about our busy lives and about how you’re dealing with “empty nest syndrome”, and then we leave sometime the next day or day after. Before we leave, we hug you and say that we’ll see you soon. You say that you’re appreciative of us taking time out and going to see you, but then you complain that we “fly in and fly right back out.” Well, we’re grown up now. We’re becoming just as much of an adult as you are, and have a laundry list of things to do as well. Only for us – we’re trying to figure out who we are and what we want to do with the rest of our lives all at the same time. Ya know, no big deal.

Since we’re in college, we want to do our best so we can make a life for ourselves after we graduate, one where we won't have to rely on you taking care of us. We also really just want to make you proud. The average college student takes five-eight classes each semester, so this is five-eight hours of our day Monday-Friday, just alone spent on time in class. But you know what comes along with classes? Homework, projects, tests, midterms, and finals. We usually have homework every single day for every single one of our classes, and this also takes up time. Sounds like a lot of time dedicated to schoolwork alone, right? But wait, there’s so much more we still have to do!

Our schoolwork is important to us, but there’s such a thing as having a balanced life. And part of this balance is having a social life. We need time to hangout with our friends and forget the stress of schoolwork. We’re young, and we’re reminded all the time that when we get out of college, the work will never end (even though it kinda seems it’s already that way right now). So before we graduate, have a full-time job, a family, and have to worry about kids of our own, we want to enjoy our time as a college kid right now. We want, and mentally need, time with our friends to go watch movies, ride bikes together around campus, chill out on the couch and stuff our faces with popcorn while we binge-watch Netflix, and enjoy the occasional parties on the weekends. We’re young, and we’re so close to not being young anymore, we’re holding on as long as we can. So now, combine the time spent on schoolwork and having a social life; that doesn’t really leave us with a lot of time, right? Right. But wait! There’s still more we have to do!

Because we’re not living at home under your roof anymore, we are living elsewhere, and have this super cool thing called “rent” that we have to pay each month. Sadly, money does not grow on trees, nor does it sprout out of our textbooks, so we have to have a job. To make enough money for rent, we probably work four-five shifts each week, and these shifts will probably take about four-six hours of our time. Taking into consideration all of the previous time we just discussed, and adding on these work shifts, now we really don’t have a lot of free time do we? Or do we even have any time left at all? Is there anything else we missed on this checklist of time distribution?

Oh, you bet there is. It’s one word: sleep. The average human is recommended to get eight hours of sleep each night. Now, you may be thinking, “Eight hours? There isn’t nearly enough time for that in the busy schedule we already went over”. Well, you’re thinking right. Our plates are so full that it’s hard, and very rare, to find enough time to get in eight hours of sleep. Studies have shown that not getting an adequate amount of sleep, has many negative effects on the body such as weight gain, an increase in stress, high blood pressure, stroke, and even heart failure. Heart failure. We love sleep just as much as you guys do; we want sleep so much that we even have short little 20-minute dreams of sleeping while we’re actually sleeping in those short little 20 minutes. But there's simply not enough time for it.

Clearly, we’re stressed out to the max. You guys don’t see this because you’re not with us all the time anymore. When we call you and you think we sound stressed out, it’s because we are stressed out. We are trying to accomplish so much to make you guys happy, to make our professors happy, to make our friends happy, and to make society happy. But sometimes, it’s just too much. We want to be with you, we promise; we’re just trying to get our lives together and seriously struggling to do it.

On behalf of all stressed out college students, please just be there for us. Be living proof of what a family is supposed to be and please don’t forget that we’re still your children. We still need your help, love, and guidance, even though we’re constantly trying to prove that we’re fine on our own. Spoiler alert: we’re not.

XOXO & pulling hair out,