Since the beginning of my Freshman year of college, I've been trying to shake that 'dead' feeling out of my body.

The first time I noticed this feeling was when I was staying up until 3 a.m. every other night trying to study for my first Ancient Greece Exam. This probably doesn't seem like such a big deal to a student who's not participating in work-study and is a natural night owl.

I was sleep deprived, lacked socialization, and placed in an unfamiliar city.

Even now, a Sophomore, not much has changed. I have friends and hang out with them 24/6, I get at least 7 hours of sleep a night, and I've been living in Austin for a year and a half now. So why do I smile less, walk from class to class with no motivation, and become so easily frustrated?

I've come up with a few conclusions:

1. Every day I go to a class with 100 or more students where the professor is more focused on staying on time than inspiring the students to learn more than just memorize the material.

2. I am working 16 hours a week while juggling 15 credit hours in order to pay for next semester's textbooks because I spent all of my BEVO Bucks paying for this semester's.

3. The 'What I Owe' page reminds me, without fail, how much debt I'm in.

University tour guides, my high school teachers, and mother forgot to explain why I can't help give the response 'like death,' 'dead', barely surviving,' etc. every time my friends ask how I am.

It's the stress.

My body is so tired from the lack of sleep, the anxiety of trying to meet the assignment deadlines and the fear of completely forgetting assignments that I physically have no energy left to give towards anything else.

Rather than telling me how rewarding college would be and how far it would help me go in life, I wish someone would have given it to me straight.

My advice to anyone going to college: Find solace in knowing there are people on campus that feel just as terrible as you do. Push on anyway!