Everyone has lied to the themselves at least a couple times. After all, no ones perfect, but here is what I find almost every college student lies to themselves about, at least a couple times during their college experience:

1. When it comes to homework you either say something like “I’m going to finish my homework early/on time” but you end up turning it in late. Or “If I finish this assignment by eight I can go out tonight” and then you go out regardless. It’s okay though, I’ve heard procrastinating enables creativity.

2. The dilemma of your social life is when you tell yourself “I’m going to stop drinking for a while” and you go out almost every night of the week. There is also the classic “I’m not going to drink that much tonight” but you end up blacking out. Also, when you do go out to drink you become this social butterfly under the influence of liquid courage. You’ll meet someone who you’ll believe is your soulmate and tell them, “duuudee I love yaaa! I’ll for sure text you to hang out”. You never do though and probably because you don’t remember much about why you even got that person’s number. It’s whatever though. Going out and blowing off some steam is beneficial…in moderation. Too much can just distract you from school, but hey! We’re young. We got to live it up while we can.

3. When living on your own calls for greater responsibilities and you convince yourself that you can afford to buy a couple drinks and still have enough money to pay the bills, but then a couple turns into a few and then a few more. “I need to cook more” is also a common statement for lots of reason. Home-cooked meals are healthier and most likely cheaper than getting take-out all the time. But you never actually cook and you’re content with always spending money on take-out. Also, “I need to clean my room” usually turns to “eh, it’ll get done. Just not today”. And it’s easy to blow off cleaning if you just want to hang out with friends which means you aren't going doing anything productive.

4. Time management and balance is the key to success. You tell yourself the night before, “I will wake up early so I can get my homework done by noon, then eat lunch, then see my professor at office hours, and make it to class 15 minutes early”. Okay there are a lot of things wrong with making plans for yourself. First, you know you're going to hit snooze until you just decide to sleep in until you actually wake up. Then you won’t actually eat because you don’t have any food in the fridge (that you want at least) and you don’t have any more money for food. And as for making it to class early, either you are late to class or decide not to go all together. It is hard being punctual when millennials are all about going with the flow (in other words being flakey).

As the years go by you either lie to yourself less because you admit your priorities aren’t set straight or because you’ve realized that school really is more important and you’ve completely indulge yourself in study sessions. But I would say it’s because life skills are learned only after failing so many times. We all learn at our own pace, but you can’t deny that somewhere within your college experience you've lied to yourself about changes you want to make so many times before you actually get into good habits. I’ll be the first to admit it because I’ve learned a lot about life since I started college. The hard way of course.