Everyone knows that college is never necessarily easy. However, there is definitely a discrepancy between the first and second semester of the year. The first semester as a freshman is filled with firsts. The first time you eat with your roommates at the cafeteria, the first time you sleep through class, the first time you go out on the weekend. Typically, most of the classes you take are Gen-eds, or 100-level entry classes, that don’t require too much effort to do well in. Adjusting to living on your own and finding new friends are among the biggest challenges during the first semester. That, and getting used to the hardly-edible cafeteria food that you forced into consuming.
Yet, the second semester tells a completely different tale. While by now you may have acclimated to living on your own, (also known as folding laundry) and making it to class in under 10 minutes, there are other challenges to tackle. The second semester is full of more advanced classes, and depending on your luck, either better or worse professors. And of course, the dreaded group projects. It can be especially difficult to transition into the less-forgiving second semester after a lengthy winter break at home with family and friends when your mom volunteered to do your laundry and you weren’t stuck stomaching the unthinkable in the cafeteria.
Yet nonetheless, we are all forced into adjusting, and starting all over. While spring break provides a temporary release from the turmoil and stress of spring semester, the sun and the fun-filled week is over before we know it. After spring break and midterms, it becomes crunch time. This means that all of those neglected group projects start piling up, there are more on campus activities to participate in, endless tests to take and essays to write, and what seems like a lot less time to get everything done.
The sunny quad only provides further distraction and procrastination because let's face it, who wants to be holed up in the library when you could be sprawled out on the quad instead? As tempting as it may be to neglect all of the responsibilities that the second semester holds, we have to suck it up and power through the remaining weeks. Finals looming in the near future may mean major levels of stress, but it also means that we are that much closer to the finish line.
So here’s to the second semester, and all of the stress and chaos that it brings. The end of the school year just means that summer is getting closer, and it will feel that much more rewarding when we finally get to sink our toes into the sand at the end of May!
