Going off to college is an exciting time.
You get to live on your own, make new friends and hang out. No one tells you what to do and when to do it. And we can’t forget the parties.
We don’t have a care in the world.
College is easy, right?
For some students, college is a time to let loose and party, but for others it’s a more serious time.
Others try to balance both the party life and academics. Also we can’t forget the students that play sports, participate in extra curricular activities and even work part-time.
Secretly, college may not be as easy or as big of a party as some might think.
From my own perspective as a communication major, by the time you hit junior year things can get pretty crazy.
Most of the classes we are taking are required for our major, so we take them a lot more seriously.
Add to that tennis practice and matches, writing for the college newspaper, photo editor for the Loquitur, director of the Loqation News show. That’s not to mention and all of my other classes. All of the homework and projects that go with them doesn’t leave much down time.
Time management is hard and saying I feel stressed just doesn’t cut it but we find ways to make it work even if it means staying up until 4 a.m.
There are nights when Loquitur editors don’t sleep. There are many days I feel exhausted, but keep telling myself that one day this will all pay off.
Cabrini College is a small campus so everyone knows everyone’s business. Drama can be a daily event.
As if we don’t already have enough to deal with we may be rooming with someone we don’t know, stressing over competition in the classroom or faced with the not-so-nice side of social media with facebook and twitter.
College is expensive.
We have student loans, parent loans or maybe your grandparents are paying the bill.
No one wants to let anyone down, so we work even harder to make all that money count.
If you have student loans then you may already be thinking about how you need to find a good job after graduation to pay back those loans and wondering what happens if you don’t.
If you are one of those students who has always known what you wanted to be when you grew up then you are lucky.
We feel the pressure to choose a major when we are freshmen. This is a big decision in our lives.
Most students end up changing their major a couple of times. Changing your major might end up costing you more money and an extra semester or two of school.
We all want to have fun with our friends and enjoy our time in college. It can be hard to find time for fun when we are so busy with our class load, worrying about our grades, sports, jobs and fear that we may not be good enough to get the job.
We have the mindset of, “My resume needs to be better than hers/his so I need to do more.”
Secretly, the life of a college student can be very emotional.
We want our time here to be an awesome four years but it can also be frustrating, stressful and disappointing.
The fun memories might not come from a party, but from those 4 a.m. nights of hard work in the newsroom.
