I know I’ve written posts about college life for me before (specifically What People Don’t Tell You about College and What I Learned my First Semester of College… that did not Require a Textbook). But I haven’t really discussed the more negative things about college. Because I have to be honest with you: college is stressful. I’m winding down the semester and everything is becoming due all at once. I am in six classes this semester, and I have five different projects all due between Thanksgiving and finals. In layman’s terms, that’s a lot. I have done my best to be proactive when it comes to these projects and have gotten a number of them done before Thanksgiving break. But this week kind of hit me like a truck. So I want to give you a more “negative” viewpoint of college based on things that have happened this week.

I need to provide a disclaimer: I’m doing okay. I am working hard and meeting all my deadlines. But as I am working, things get put to the side or other things get in the way. I don’t want you to think that I’m suffering or am completely stressed out. I just want to show you some of the things that happen in stressful times of college life.

On that note, College is…

• Not going to bed early- This past week, I have been in bed no earlier than 12:30 every night. Now, that is not terrible, but it definitely makes me a little more tired the next day. And since that was every day, I was tired all week long.
• Hardly seeing your roommate- while I may live in an apartment, it’s not all that big. You would think that such a small space would force you to spend time with your roommate, but that is not the case. There were a couple of times this week where the only time I saw my roommate were the twenty minutes in the morning that it takes to go from our apartment to class. By the time I would get back from my classes, she was either in the library or in her room (sometimes with the door closed) getting work done. Then I would leave for work, and she would usually have her door closed (read: be in bed) once I got off my shift at 9:00 p.m.
• Coffee at 5:30- I don’t drink coffee. So this one is more about my roommate. One day this past week, she comes downstairs at 5:30 and makes some coffee and goes back upstairs. About twenty minutes later, she comes back down all bundled up and goes, “I’m going to the library.” I didn’t see her for another 4 hours. Mind you, since she’s the only one who drinks coffee, she usually only buys one kind at a time. There is no decaf coffee in our apartment. So my roommate made full strength coffee at 5:30 p.m. in the middle of the week to get work done in the library.
• Not sleeping in- This past week, my first class on Wednesday and Friday was cancelled. This meant that I did not have class until noon. Rather than sleeping in, I got up and went in with my roommate at our normal time. I then went to the library to get work done on one of my bigger projects. I could have slept in, but instead I chose to be productive.
• Trying to get out of doing homework- I also had a class be cancelled on Thursday last week. Now time to give you some context: we have a homework assignment for this class due every Tuesday. I asked on the class before Thanksgiving if we could postpone the assignment to Thursday (I didn’t want to do homework over the weekend). He extended half of the assignment to Thursday. Well, he told us on Tuesday about class being cancelled. So I emailed him early on Wednesday asking if we still had to do the homework since we had another assignment due on Tuesday and only two more class meetings after that. It took him a while to respond, but he said that the homework was still necessary. However, he told me that since it took him so long to respond that he would give me a slight extension on the homework. This was great, and I took advantage of it because…
• Two presentations in one day- I had back to back presentations last Thursday. One was individual, and the other was a group. I have been giving speeches for over ten years (and no, that is not an exaggeration), but regardless of how many speeches I give, I still get nervous to the point where I have no appetite and no focus. The only thing I’m focusing on is the upcoming presentation. Having two in one day (even worse that they were back to back) made me unable to concentrate on anything else. Thus, when I was granted the extension on my homework (see previous point), I took full advantage of it and did not even really look at the rest of the homework I had to do until after my presentations were done.
• Cleaning your room at 3 A.M. on the weekend- I didn’t have time or motivation to unpack my clothes from Thanksgiving for pretty much all of last week. This wouldn’t be a problem except that it was driving me crazy. I don’t spend a lot of time in my room at my apartment. It’s mainly there for sleeping and preparing for the day. But I like to keep it clean. My room is also so small that even a slight mess is kind of a lot.
• Keeping a running list of both my projects and current grades- Like I mentioned, I have five projects to do in a little over two weeks. To help me keep up with everything I have to do, I have a note on my laptop that is up-to-date with both everything I have to do and everything I have done, including papers, presentations, and upcoming exams. I’m also working on improving my GPA this semester, so I have another note that is current on my grades so that I do not have to go searching for them.

I think that’s it for now in the last week. I don’t want to condone this and be like “Oh yeah. I do this all the time.” I really don’t. Things happened this week and stuff came up and other things got pushed to the side. But I got things done that I needed to, and for the most part, I actually kept up my sleep schedule and a little bit of a social life. I don’t show this side a lot, because I don’t experience this side a lot. But it is real, and I wanted to show you that.

Again, I’m doing just fine. At this point, I only have two presentations and two papers left, and one of those papers is going to be extremely easy. I’m handling it, but I wanted to share with all of you what I’m going through. I hope you learned something or at the very least had a good laugh.