So this week has been a nightmare week for me. I'm sure many students can share this sentiment with me. Everyone is getting antsy because finals are drawing nearer, and it's only less than month away from winter break. My professors are feeling the strain because maybe our class is behind their syllabus, or the class is ahead and they don't have enough material, or they still have to write their final. I have depression and anxiety and my mood also depends heavily on the weather outside.

While I love the chill of winter and fall, I don't like that it can also be quite dreary. More than anything, I just need sunshine and because I've been so busy, I feel like I haven't seen the sun in years. I go through this struggle every year, so I knew it was coming, but it's different than it was in high school.

In high school, I didn't feel my whole future riding on me and now I do. Now I feel that the decisions I make today may affect me for the rest of my adult life. I had two tests, one quiz, and four papers due, three of them for the same class. This has been my hardest week yet and I still feel more invigorated than I ever did in high school. I think that's because I love the place where I go to school.

I love the people I go to school with. I love my professors because their love for their work is boundless. Only once in a while do I see someone that doesn't want to be here. Even behind the most tired faces, I see joy and wonder and inspiration.

I came into college with an open mind, and an open heart. I vowed that I wasn't going to allow myself to give up. Every day I make the same trek to all of my classes and I know that my ultimate dream of getting my Bachelors degree is one day closer, that the beginning of my real, raw, unattached life is drawing nearer.

Some days are harder than others, some nights I hardly get any sleep because I'm so concerned about a presentation, or a paper, or whether or not I wrote my a minor scale correctly in music theory (I'm a music major). I love this life. Now I understand why everyone in my family stayed in college for a long time, it's because it's one of the few times in life that you get to indulge yourself. You get to explore who you are and what the world is like around you. You are also surrounded by people who interested in the same things you are and you get to hear their perspective.

One thing my school, Catawba College, does well is it welcomes Freshmen with open arms. Everyone in the freshman class has to take a First Year Seminar, in which they study a specific topic mostly with the goal of learning how to take a college class. I got lucky and am in an Honors first-year seminar where we discuss the huge questions that humanity has been trying to answer for most of its existence. We discuss and learn from one another's experiences in this amazing way.

When we don't have class for some reason we all miss it because we are all pretty good friends and get along well with one another despite our varied upbringings and life experiences and I've never been in a room where a group of twenty people can have a coherent, thoughtful conversation on whether man is born good or evil, or if war can ever be just, or has human civilization truly progressed forward. It's magic.

Sure life can get hard sometimes. Most mornings it's a struggle for me to leave the safety and warmth of my twin XL bed in my dorm room, but for maybe one of the first times in my life, getting out of bed is a little easier because I am genuiinely excited for the day ahead.