Finals for first semester's classes were done and over four weeks ago, and as a freshman, this was the first winter break where I didn't have any academic responsibility.
I've been finishing entire seasons of Lucifer on Netflix and The Last Tycoon on Amazon Prime Video, and catching up on the sleep I desperately needed. While I was in NYC with my friend the week I leave for school, I received an email from my anthropology professor for next semester with a syllabus and a 36 reading attached. He expects us to have it read before our first class.
The amount of responsibility I have waiting back for me at school hit me like a truck.
I have the great opportunity to be more involved on campus and try interesting classes, but the reality required started to loom over me. I began to doubt myself. Was I able to handle classes, activities, and live on my own again? How am I going to balance all of this without letting anyone down? Should I switch my schedule around? Will I be able to succeed as much as I did the first semester academically? All I wanted to do was to press some imaginary pause button to have more time to figure it out all of these little worries from packing everything I need to being mentally and emotionally prepared to dive head first into the new semester.
When I brought this up to my parents, they laughed and told me to get myself together.
Before you jump to any conclusions, my parents are extremely supportive of me. They laughed because they were more confident than I was about going back to school. My mother simply put it this way, "If you had to leave home for months on end for the first time and still achieved everything you did, you can do it again." My dad joked around saying if I wasn't ready to leave I could just stay home, but I knew staying home would keep me in the same place in my life and goes against why I went to college in the first place.
I can't press pause on time, but I did well first semester because I did my best with whatever time I did have.
This is more than simple time management and avoiding procrastinating. I had to maximize the time I had by making a daily plan for myself and matching each task with a time slot. If I have a 45-minute break between, then I would do smaller tasks like daily Spanish homework, reply to emails, start an article, or brainstorm for papers. When I'm done with classes I have more time to study material in depth, this would also include reading 36 pages divided up into multiple days.
It's important to stick to a plan, but knowing how to rearrange it to fit last minute changes and working around those planned events like dance rehearsals. As long as I'm given dates and times, I can adjust my schedule. Adding on another weekly commitment won't change how I split up my time.
Talking to my professors and being actively engaged with the material they were teaching and reaching out to the right people to learn more about a program I'm interested in helped me start to network and put me on the right path for my career. I wasn't able to talk to all of my professors, but I was able to have meaningful, detailed conversations with the ones I had the opportunity to speak to and gave me a lot of guidance when I was unsure.
After daylight savings, I started to become easily fatigued and started to pay attention to my health. Did I overeat and put myself into a food coma? Did I not eat enough? Did I get enough sleep? Do I need to take a supplement? Syracuse winters are brutal, not just because of the cold. The lack of sunlight drained my energy along with it. I remembered my friend mentioned Vitamin D and B12 to boost energy levels throughout the day.
Little reminders of the steps I took to take care of myself and succeed last semester gave me a little bit of my confidence back for the new semester ahead.
Failure is a threat and largely shoots down self-esteem. Continuing living in a fearful mindset won't do me any favors.
I'm going to miss having my family being there with me, but as the oldest, I have to set an example for my younger siblings and make my parents proud. While I definitely still feel this pressure to continue, I know I'm doing something right because it means I'm taking on more to step out of my comfort zone and learn more, which will always be my goal.
