People tell me that I should make the most out of my college years; that when I graduate I will have responsibilities, a job, a family. They tell me that I should enjoy it while I still can. But I find it hard to find the time to actually enjoy it. I spend all my time doing homework, studying for tests and trying to keep from gaining the “freshman 15,” all while trying to decide what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.
Teachers, friends, parents—they expect us to do it all, yet they wonder why we are so stressed all the time.
There are many things that cause stress for college students. Each one of these things alone wouldn’t seem like such a big deal, but all together, these small things take over their lives.
The first and most obvious reason why college students are so stressed is the workload. It seems like each teacher believes that his/her class is the only one a student is taking and, therefore, they assign pages of homework, constant quizzes and multiple tests. If a student was taking one class per semester, fine, that wouldn’t be a lot of work, but when he or she is taking seven or eight classes each semester, and each of these teachers thinks that way, the work adds up to hours in the library and a huge lack of sleep (if any at all!).
There is also the pressure of being social. You want to spend time with your roommates and you want to go out with your friends. But the truth is that a lot of the time where you really want is to be is in bed sleeping. There’s this feeling that if you do that it would make you lazy, or unsocial. Some may even say depressed. So no matter how tired you are or how stressed you might be feeling, you push yourself to go out anyway.
Let me tell you something: it is okay to want to spend some time alone. Being with people 24/7 is stress in itself, especially when you have roommates. You are living in a room the size of a closet, with multiple people who are all on different schedules. Your personal space is their personal space, and their mess is your mess. Sometimes, you have to allow yourself to have a break.
As college students, we do the best that we can to juggle everything. We go to class, we do our work and we hang out with our friends. We sleep as little as our body allows, and we drink as much coffee as we possibly can. But we also get overwhelmed. We have our own responsibilities, and we have our own limits. We each have our own personal kryptonite—whether it’s the fact that we need to sleep 10 hours each night, or that once every few days we need some time to ourselves.
For the people around us:
Friends: I’m sorry for yelling at you the other night—I had a lot on my mind.
Mom and Dad: I’m sorry for not calling you this week. I just haven’t had the time.
Teachers: Please give us a break. We are only human.
And students: Please remember—not even Supergirl can do it all.
