Welcome to College. Land of the free home of the broke. I get it, people around you are going out and having fun. They are getting involved in events and organizations on campus and where are you? Working your fourth shift of the week at a minimum wage job that you used to love and it's only Wednesday. You start to ask yourself, "Why?" Why would I just sit around and watch everyone else's snap-story of them having a blast while I am counting down the minutes until I can clock out?

Then it hits you — tuition, car phone bill, books. All of the money you are currently working for will be gone in a matter of days after you receive it just like it has for the countless checks prior. Slowly the anxiety starts to build as you check and recheck your bank account and redo every budget in your head. You start to wonder why you thought it would be a good idea to ever leave home. What made you think you could make it on your own?

Well, I assure you are doing far better than you think you are. Yes, money can be tight, stressful, and scary. But right now you are building skills that your peers will later see as a value because while you were pinching and saving pennies, they were out spending their allowance from mom and dad on items that won't be meaningful in the future. You are taking the time to invest in your future by investing your time not only in your studies but in the work it takes to pay for such studies.

But yet you still feel some sort of regret or distaste because you have missed so many meetings of that club you were really interested in or your friends stopped inviting you to go places because they got tired of the usual response of, "I can't. I'm working." In this case, I can advise you of one thing and one thing only: you can work. You can study. But if you do not work on and study yourself then how much did you really learn in your college experience?

You need to be able to look back on your college years and be able to remember something other than work and bills. You need to be able to reminisce about the time you and your friends stayed up late studying but really you were paying more attention to the laughter that filled the room as someone told an embarrassing story. You have to be able to think back to organizations you were involved with and shaped you into the better person that you are today and the life long friends and connections you made because of them.

As you get older you will increasingly become more and more independent, even though you are certain that is not possible. You will continue to work hard because that is who you are; it is ingrained into your soul by now. But as you are sitting at your future career thinking back to what got you to that point would you rather say you worked and worked for it or that you worked, laughed and enjoyed your way to that seat you are taking at a job you love.

Don't work your whole life away just yet.