Sometimes, I feel like I am the only one running around campus like a chicken with its head cut off. I am constantly disoriented, confused, wondering what's going on, etc. Then, I have a simple conversation with a classmate, and I realize that (thankfully) I am not the only one. College life is a stressful life. People think us college kiddos have it easy. We go to class, do some homework, and sleep all the stress away at the end of the day. This, my optimistic and oh-so naive friends, is not true, and here are some good reasons why.
1. Most of us have to work for a living.
While I would love to be one of the kids who has everything paid for them during their college years with nothing to worry about but getting good grades, that is just not an option for me. Myself, like many others, have to maintain a job while going to school. With that comes less time for studying, and much more stress.
2. There is SO much adulting to do.
I mean, seriously. We graduate high school with stars in our eyes and set our sails for the future. We don't really understand the hurricane we are throwing ourselves into. There are seriously so many responsibilities in college. You have to get good grades, which for most means studying and going to class. You have to do extracurricular activities in order to have a good resume for grad school or a job after undergrad. You have to deal with managing scholarships and/or loans (which will inevitably come back to haunt you). You have to deal with your new life without your parents always there for you. YOU HAVE TO MAKE YOUR OWN DOCTOR APPOINTMENTS. Have I said enough?
4. We want to have fun, and we deserve it, too.
College is supposed to be a time for adventure, exploring, and discovering new things not only about ourselves, but about the world around us. We are here to learn, but we are also here to have fun. We enjoy partying occasionally. We all have our 21st birthday in college, so of course we are going to celebrate, right? And so what if your birthday happens to fall on a Tuesday and you have an 8 am on Wednesday. It becomes really hard to delegate our time in college. We are so young, and working so hard. We do deserve to have fun. And when the weekend hits, most of us college kids party in order to get rid of all the week's stress. Mixing business and pleasure like this makes it hard to succeed. Not impossible, but hard. It's kind of like a catch-22.
The moral of the story is that college is hard, but it is rewarding. We all came here for good reasons, unless your only reason for coming WAS to party, then I think you need to re-evaluate your priorities. We do a lot every single day, and most of us do it well. We deserve more credit for how hard we work.
