Freshman year has officially come and gone. We're in our second year of college, and it seems like we should know how to college by this time. By now, professors have expected us to learn how to have time management skills and to study without cramming the night before. But at times, we're still are as clueless as the incoming freshmen. While we should have our lives more together by this point, we know this isn't a reality for the majority of us.
We're at the point of the semester where it seems like no matter how much work we do, we just can't keep up with the work load our professors think we should be able to do. It feels like the only social life we have is the "socialization" we get through study groups. It's also reached that point of the semester that is make or break it time for passing our classes. We are not only stressed about just getting all of our work done, but also praying that it won't all be done in vain. For those of us who have actually declared a major, we've begun to take major classes and may or may not have questioned whether this path is right for us... multiple times. It seems like this is a never-ending path with no light at the end of the tunnel.
After spending a year on the meal plan, many of us have gotten sick of the cafeteria food and have gone off the meal plan. This plan seemed great in theory before the year started. After all, it saves money, means no more Sodexo, and gives you more freedom to go out eat whenever your heart desires. But not too long into the semester, you realize that you can eat Zaxbys and Hibachi Express only so many times, and that feeding yourself is actually a lot more work than it seems. Meal planning and buying groceries as busy college students is impossible. Plus but groceries are expensive. It wasn't until I actually started buying my own food that I realized fruits and non-processed foods were a luxury. So here I am, still living off of ramen noodles because for just $2, you have your next 12 meals.
As sophomores, we are starting to phase out of taking the easy gen ed classes and beginning to take classes that actually pertain to our majors. This means our workload has at least tripled and seems forever incomplete. Sleep is luxury not afforded to many of us. There just seems to always be an unending to-do list. Stress is a state of being for us. Being a responsible adult isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's a productive day if we haven't skipped any classes, have done our homework for the next day, and remembered to eat three meals in the day. But actually managing to live life is sometimes just too much and requires sacrifice, which normally means being sustained on no sleep just so that you can feel like you're not completely drowning.
If you haven't been asked what your major is and what you're going to do with your life, are you even a college student? Everyone assumes that we've figured it all out by now and expect that we know what we want do with the rest of our lives before we're even 20 years old. At this point, we're not just wondering that we should be doing with the rest of our lives as college students, but whether we should even be a college student anymore. It's all about survival of the fittest. But hey, at least after this year, we're halfway through our college career. Hopefully.
