My entire life I’ve always been the girl with too much on her plate. Whether it was jetting from school to gymnastics or cheer practice as an adolescent to speeding from one part-time job to another as a young adult, I have always had very little free time. Yet, in my spare time I do have to chill out and relax, I don’t. I go visit my grandparents, workout with my dad, do puzzles with my mom and sister, or convince my friends to get ice cream with me. I assumed when I finally got to college, I would gain some chill and learn to relax, a wildly wrong assumption.
I am a second year dual science major: chemistry and biology. I take seventeen credits this semester resulting in a total of 23 hours a week for scheduled classes alone: 12 hours of lecture, 1 hour of recitation, 10 hours of lab. I also tutor pre-calculus 7 hours a week with an extra hour of training each week and another hour every other week for a meeting. In addition to this, I joined a sorority, Alpha Delta Pi, I am a member of the Pre-med club, and I write for the Odyssey. To say I have a lot going on is a drastic understatement. I am busy, overwhelmed, and stressed out, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I look at being overwhelmed and stressed as a lifestyle; I really do work the best under pressure. My day typically starts around 8 am and usually doesn’t end until after midnight. After attending my classes and tutoring sessions from about 9:30 am to 5 pm, I go home, eat dinner, and head back onto to campus to the library. With Starbucks in hand, I sit and crank out five hours of studying and homework before heading back home to shower and sleep. This is how I function five days a week: tired eyes eager with ambition.
My weekends come and go in the blink of an eye, usually with lots of naps and studying involved. Rarely do I go out to parties with my friends; I’m either too exhausted from the week prior or have exams I have to study for coming up. If anything, the weekends are my ‘chill’ time if one could even call it that.
I like the lifestyle I live. It’s taught me to become organized and I’ve gained crazy good time management skills from it. Although tears may slip out occasionally from the crippling deadlines approaching, I quickly suck it up and get back on track. I don’t wallow in self-pity when I have to skip a party to study in the library, I do my best not to complain to others about how much work I have to get done, and I definitely don’t see myself giving anything up to live a more relaxed lifestyle. I may be stressed out and overwhelmed with everything on my plate, but it’s the life I choose and wouldn’t trade it for anything.
