Here's what I've learned in college.
It gets harder.
It's not like high school, where senior year is a cake walk of senioritis and four study halls.College gets progressively harder and more stressful as you are pummeled with 400-level classes, jobs with more responsibility and the challenge of finding a career or internship. Add that to the stresses of relationships, roommates and some semblance of a social life, and you're lucky if you aren't gray-haired by graduation.
I don't know what planet I was on when I thought college would get easier.
Once I got past the initial freshman year jitters of learning to share a room with someone for the first time, figuring out where the best parties were and somehow convincing myself to go to class even though nobody would care if I was there or not, I figured it would be downhill from there.
Boy, was I wrong.
Now, living off campus, the best parties are even farther away, I have to learn to share a whole apartment with three other people, and those classes that I didn't want to attend? I still don't want to attend them, except now they're small enough where the professor actually notices if I'm missing. Plus the workload is about ten times what it had been in my early college career.
I thought this year would be great. Having my own place (well, sort of), living with my best friends and working at a job that I enjoy sounded like an awesome way to spend my third year at OU.
Between dealing with an unexpected long-distance relationship, having to actually cook my own meals, worrying about utility bills and working more hours than last year, it is definitely not what I anticipated.
I am also discovering there just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to be done. Despite taking only 16 credit hours, there isn't enough time to finish all the required reading. The optional reading? Well, that's out of the question. Sleeping is out of the question as well ' it's more like quick power naps now.
As far as cooking my own meals is concerned, that's just a chore that I don't have time for. I have discovered that it is indeed possible to get sick of eating Mac 'n cheese and hotdogs every day. A good day is when I actually have the time or effort to make pasta or chicken for dinner. And I don't know why they call it the Freshman 15. I have put on more weight this quarter than any other quarter because I simply do not have time to fit working out into my schedule anymore.
Freshman and sophomore years were the glory days. Looking back, my classes were easy. While dining hall food was mediocre at best, at least it was pre-prepared. And despite not necessarily getting along with a roommate in a dorm, I didn't have to concern myself with how much water or electricity she used. There was actually time during the day to nap and work out, and nights were actually used for sleeping, not studying.
Don't get me wrong ' being a junior or senior does have its benefits. You can live with as many people as you can stand, and there is a freedom in off-campus living that doesn't exist in the dorms. And if you do still live in the dorms, well, you have accumulated enough credits to have your choice of the prime spot in any residence hall on campus. And because you have so many credits, you register earlier and earlier, thus ensuring that you can take a jogging or aerobics class just so you have time to work out every week.
This quarter probably won't kill me like I initially thought it would, and I might even make it all the way to graduation. It is possible to survive the last two years of college. It just takes a lot of time management, stress coping, sleepless nights and bulk purchases of caffeine.
So my advice to freshmen has to be this: Enjoy sleeping while you can.
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Karie Spaetzel
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