Syllabus week, prices of books, assignments spread throughout the months. All thrown at you at once. Sheer panic sets in. And before you know it, you’re ready to drop all your classes, drop out of college, and start thinking of inventions you could create to sell and hopefully make millions off of so that you’ll never need to worry about money or school ever again. Sorry to break it to you guys, but that’s not much easier than school to begin with, and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that plan has a very low, one-in-a-million success rate. You’re just not that lucky.

I’m in the middle of my first week back from winter break–spring semester 2018–and I’m ready to run out of my classroom and throw up from all of the built-up stress I have endured so far and the week is barely over. I’m trying to figure out what books I really need to buy or not, I'm marking up every syllabus with assignment due dates, I’m double checking the reviews on Rate My Professor to make sure I’m with the one all these other students have commented on (Are ya’ll sure on your reviews? Are we taking about the same professor here? They better get better or I’m blaming and coming after all of you.), and I’m debating on picking up more classes just so that my graduation date doesn’t get pushed further back than it already has. Apparently some of my advisors don’t feel the need to advise nor push me very much. I don’t care about your other advisees or how many course you are teaching on top of that… WE’RE TALKING ABOUT ME HERE! HELP!!!!!!!! HELLOOOOOO!!!

All jokes aside, I thought this semester was going to be so much easier than the last and this first week I’m afraid is going to prove me wrong. It’s so much information thrown at you all at once and it feels like it’s never going to be done and over with. Why college has to torture us further than our bank accounts I don’t know why, but you really can’t get much in life without that degree. And it’s not that I don’t love my major and can’t wait to be working in it, I do… but man do I feel college makes getting there a lot harder than it needs to be. First off college…why you gotta cost so much? Jesus, give me some kind of scholarship or more money off from my FASFA than I got. Second…why do textbooks or “required texts” have to be thrown on top of all the money I’m already paying? Make. Them. Free. Because $100+ books is really ridiculous considering I’m only really going to need to use it like twice. Because let’s be honest you know we’re only going to use it twice. Our professors know we’re only going to use it twice–it’s no secret–so there is really no need to have our books cost so much. Third…the gen ed courses. Why in the f*ck do I need to take all these classes that pertain nothing to my major? Waste of time. I know what I want to do. I know what I want to be. I know everything about the major I chose and the information needed within it. So, college, when you throw me into a course that I’m totally not comfortable with, that I know nothing about, and that involves information that I will NEVER need ever again, why are you making me stress out even more because of it? Evil. College is pure evil. College is a money-sucking machine. College makes me cry more than anyone who has ever been on The Bachelor combined does. And that is A LOT.

The way your semester is going to go is usually determined by how your first week of classes go and, similarly, to how your life is going to be like within the first week of a new year…how’s that looking for you? Big ball of stress. Yupp, just more lies and disappointment to us poor stressed-out college kids. But hang in there. It’s only the first week. Some classes will get easier and some will get harder. It just always goes like that, but you need college. You need that degree. Mistakes are going to be made along the way, but college enhances that aspect of real life where things aren’t perfect and now’s the time to make mistakes and learn from them. College isn’t so bad and before you know it, summer break is here and you can burn all your books and notes in a flaming fire. Well, maybe not your books…buyback or resell that s***. You’re broke, so getting less than half of what you spent on the book is better than nothing, right? Whoops another lie. Thanks College.