College, like anything you do after high school, is challenging and most of the time rewarding. I will be the first to tell you that taking eighteen credits in one semester can be difficult. My Business Law teacher told our class that yes, her class was very difficult, but if we study 2 hours for every one hour in class, our grade should be just fine. Our parents tell us to get eight hours of sleep, I personally feel better waking up after eight but I know not a lot of students are able to get that amount of sleep. I learned my freshman year to take a nap when able because otherwise sleep deprivation would set in. Everyone has to eat, of course, and a person should be able to eat, its a natural right that we have as humans for living, (I learned that from the same teacher.) Although we all have a right to food, it does not say how we should eat, so apparently inhaling food is okay? Who needs to digest anyway? Let me do some math here...

There are 24 hours in a day, 7 days a week that is equivalent to 168 hours a week. I am currently taking 18 credit hours so I am in the classroom 18 hours of my week, down to 150 hours. 2 hours of studying for every hour in class? 36 hours of studying according to that teacher. I now have 114 free hours. Lets be generous and say 2 hours a day for eating, 14 a week, bringing my total free hours to 100. Now for sleeping, we're told we need 8 hours a night, 7 nights a week, we should spend 56 hours sleeping bringing my total to 44. If you are like any student at Lake Erie College you either have a job on campus, or you play a sport, sometimes both. I'm going to estimate the average time for sports and work to be 15 hours, bringing weekly total to 29 free hours. This leaves us with 5 hours to do as we please per day. I'm going to say about an hour for a shower, 4 hours left. An average person has four hours per day left over to hang out with friends, nap, or do whatever they feel like doing. To me, that doesn't sound too bad. Although one could say my math is wrong, I did include Saturday and Sunday, days without classes, you can still see that over a week span- it'll all work out. Although all of this studying and work you have to do may seem like a lot during the week, you can take weekends off if you have all the work done.

There are a few ways you can accomplish success with 18 credit hours. You can either:

1. Study all week and sleep/hang out on weekends.

2. Study on Saturday and Sunday only (not recommended.)

3. Disperse study time throughout every day of the week, study until you believe you know the material then go a little longer just to be sure, sleep when you feel like it, eat when you feel like it and strive to get good grades.

Incase you are afraid of losing friends because of so much time spent on school...

4. Guess what! Your friends have school work as well! Get together to do homework and watch movies, you will be more motivated than if you were working alone, sometimes that is.

Here's to the new semester. May the lectures not be incredibly horrible and the professors be willing to help. To the flashcards you will make for one class and then never look at again, as well has the books that you won't receive more than 10% of the price you bought them for at the beginning of the semester. And lastly, I have to agree with Effie Trinket on this one.