It's only a few days into my second semester of college, and things have been very different for me. I had expectations for how the semester was going to start out based on my experiences from last fall. And while I was not caught completely by surprise, there where definitely a lot of differences. And it ended up throwing me off guard for the first two days.

First off, there was no sort of "ease in" time this week. Last fall, I moved in several days before class began, stayed with my parents an extra day before they went back home, they went with me to buy all of my textbooks, and my classes didn't really start assigning any actual work until the second week of class.

This semester started off on a very different note. I arrived Sunday evening the day before class started, my parents went home the next morning, and I was on my own to get my books. None of this was really a problem for me, but everything was definitely moving at a much faster pace than before.

Then, class starts. After my first day, I had two reading assignments and a short writing assignment to get done. Not too bad. After day two of class I had even more reading and note taking to do. It ended up taking me almost three hours to get through it all. And I only finished half of the work for my religion class.

Believe me, I am a person who usually will thrive with challenges. But I am also a person who has anxiety. And to top it all off, I am a person who is the most focused in the evening time.

As much as I love reading about world history, I've also been reading the Lunar Chronicles, and figuring out that I won't have time to read even a few chapters of Winter because of how long it takes for me to get my homework done is not my idea of fun.

Like a lot of people, I am going to have to rethink how I allot time to get work done, to fit into my new schedule this semester. Such as today, I got my English quiz done in between classes, and I am going to get the reading done before going to dinner, not after.

Given that I'm not used to squeezing work into random bits of free time, it's going to be a weird thing for me to get used to. But in the end, I'm probably going to end up thanking myself later on.

Especially when I finally do end up with enough time in the evenings to read the things that I want to, and not just what I have to.