Time is a measure of change, and it is truly hard to believe how much has changed in just a short amount of time. Just last night, I stayed up until 6:30 in the morning before my bed began to call my name. You’d think I was studying, especially since we are in the final leg of the semester. But I spent my time taking care of laundry, catching up on some Netflix series, and baking cookies. In fact, many of my late nights here at the University of Southern California are not because of my inability to start assignments early, but because of a fundamental change in lifestyle.
Freshmen year I was honestly hit like a train. Between moving out of the suburban, and beginning an intensive college curriculum, I don’t think I had a moment of rest the entire year. I somehow made it for breakfast at the dining hall every morning by 7am, and then quickly rushed to my early 8am classes afterwards. I then started to develop strange study habits where in the evenings I would always be too lazy to study, so I elected to go to bed around 6:00PM and then wake up early and begin my day around 2:00AM.
For the longest time, I lived in a very strange paradigm because of my nocturnal sleep cycle. All my friends would be coming back from a long night out, and I would just be waking up getting ready for the “day.” Because of this timing, many highlights from my freshmen year were the heartfelt and breakthrough conversations I had with my floor mates in the middle of the night. It became a weird routine, I would wake up, everyone would come home, we’d chat about something intriguing, and then it would repeat.
I’d honestly like to say that I have learned the most from my college courses in this experience, but I learned so much more outside of class just from the college lifestyle. Between trying to manage self-care, a social life, class, and sleep, the college experience is really unparalleled. Class can get so stressful— trying to finish all the papers and the tests— but ultimately everything is a part of larger growing experience. Learning what habits and foods work best for your body, finding out what people you like to go out with vs which people you’d rather study with, and nonetheless managing an absolutely absurd course load.
After just two years of college, quite a bit has changed. I manage to work out now almost every day. I’ve been eating healthier and healthier to keep me in good shape for the books. And I even try to find time to read things I enjoy, and time to spend with all my new friends. Somehow I still manage to fit class in between the madness, and even with my insomnia and strange sleep schedule, I do in fact manage to get some rest. Being a college student is certainly not easy or simple, but there is so much to learn from just being a college student.
