If you thought you were busy and your life was hard before college, get ready for a long four years...

As if balancing your school work and social life isn't stressful enough, try playing a sport too!

Being a college athlete is not easy. It comes with the many late nights studying in the library and the early morning workouts. I'm sure every college athlete has thought to themselves at least once or twice, "I wish I was a regular college student and didn't have to worry about playing a sport too". We've all been there, whether it was during the few minutes leading up to the start of that fitness test you've been dreading for weeks, or when you're missing the biggest party of the year because you have a game tomorrow.

Here's the thing, in a few days, weeks, months and years, you won't remember that party you missed or the few hours of sleep you didn't get. Instead, you will remember the hard work put into your sport and the games you win with your best friends. You will remember that game-winning goal you scored in the last minute of overtime in a very important game and you will feel the incredible sense of excitement and joy that no party or amount of sleep could ever give you.

Playing a sport in college means doing your homework and studying while you're on a bus or plane traveling to your away game. It means missing classes due to away games and completing hours of makeup work from the days you missed. It means coming home from a late practice and being too tired to cook dinner, so you end up making ramen noodles.There will be days when you will sprint to class after a practice and have to sit in class for an hour drenched in sweat. There is a guarantee of hard times and times you wished you never played in college. But, being a college athlete has so many more pros that outweigh the cons.

A college team provides a family away from home. You'll spend many hours a day with your teammates and eventually they become your life long best friends. You go through tough times with them but you share the good and funny times together too. You'll create strong bonds with coaches and teammates that will make you feel a sense of belonging and they'll become people who will always have your back no matter what.

College is a scary place at first and it's easy to stray away and get lost. But, being an athlete in college keeps you in check and helps you become a very well rounded person with many other resources to help you.

It will be hard, it will be exhausting at times, but I promise you, at the end of the day, it will all be worth it.