Starting the fall semester is always the hardest thing to do, because the three months of summer freedom are over and you have now sold your soul back to school as classes begin again. It’s a rough life out there for a college student, y’all. There are many terrible stages as the semester begins again but to make it simpler, I’ll just give you five!

1. Excitement

You get excited as you begin to move back, because you finally get to see all of your best friends again! My personal second favorite of coming back for fall semester is FOOTBALL SEASON STARTING SOON. You reunite with all of your friends and get to catch up on everything that you did this summer! You get to hang out and relax before the stress of the semester begins!

2. Crying

You begin to sell your soul to the bookstore as you spend close to $400 on just textbooks alone. You then realize you have to go back to being a broke college student, because you just spent your last summer job paycheck on your textbooks.

3. Temporary Stress

You already start to stress because you begin to look at just the first chapter of your textbook. As you look at the first chapter, you realize you REMEMBER NOTHING THAT YOU LEARNED IN PRIOR SEMESTERS. This causes you to begin to panic and stress, but then remember that sometimes the professors are nice enough to at least review before teaching new material.

4. Relaxation

You finally begin to relax again, because you realize that you still have a few days of summer left. You use these last few days to sleep in while you can, finish binge watching any shows that you started on Netflix, hiding in your room from people, reading for fun, or even still spending time with your friends. Enjoy this stage while you can!

5. Panic

This begins the night before classes begin. The horrible, horrible Sunday night. You’re sitting with your friends when one of them suddenly says, “Y’all, classes start tomorrow.” Everyone then looks at one another in shock and realizes how fast these last few days went by because y’all were having so much fun being back together. Everyone begins to panic all together because your sweet, sweet freedom is gone and you now belong to your classes and student organizations yet again.