I love babysitting my baby cousins. They are my "best buddies"--we play hide and seek, build Legos, watch movies, and eat (probably not the healthiest) snacks. However, when the afternoon comes, they go into total and complete meltdown mode. Their least favorite words, "nap time", come out of my mouth and you would have thought I told them that something horribly tragic happened. They stomp their feet, yell words that I can't make out, and cry and cry and cry and cry.
When I came to college, I realized that we college students sometimes act in the exact same way as my 5 year old cousins. Maybe it's not over who gets the best toy or better pack of gummies, but there are some real, college student tantrums. Here are a few:
"I'm hungry and I need food. NOW!"
The hungry college student is dangerous. It seems like we're always hungry, or figuring out where our next meal is, but we have no money to go buy food. The worst is when the hunger hits at 3 in the morning, where you debate eating the Chicken-flavored crackers that your roommate keeps around, or venturing out to the 24 hour McDonald's a mile or so down the road. Neither option seems pleasurable, and so the crankiness worsens.
*sobbing because you need a nap*
This is almost a daily occurrence for me. We spend all night working on homework, get up early for class, go through our routine, and then come back to our rooms for the mid-afternoon slump. The exhaustion hits hard, and all you want to do is sleeeeep. So, you take that hour (or 4) nap, wake up in a confusion, and get to the never-ending list of things to do. So, you stay up late to finish your work and the viscous cycle continues on. Sleep deprivation seems to hit at the worst times, when a nap isn't possible.
"I don't wanna!! NO NO NO NO"
Every time I start a 5 page paper mere hours before it's do or I walk into a math class, these words are exclaimed over and over. I contemplate what happen if I didn't take the test or finish the essay. Sometimes, it even gets to the point of thinking about dropping out of school and finding a minimum wage dog walker job, because you know you'd rather walk hundreds of dogs for weeks on end then finish that last 500 words of your term paper.
"I want my mommy!"
The most common "tantrum". The other day, when all of my weekend plans had fallen through and things just weren't working out, I knew that there was only one person in the world that I wanted to talk to was my mom. She's the one person that can calm me down, talk some sense into me, and pick me back up when I most need it. I wish they allowed mommy's in college.
So college kids, don't fret if you feel yourself acting like a 5-year-old. It happens to the best of us.
