College is a time for learning, but also a time for mistakes. The four (or three, or five, or six, no shame, go at your own pace) years that you spend in college will be ones that you won’t forget. You’ll probably go to class, then rush off to work, and then come home and take a nap before deciding to start your homework that’s due at midnight. You’ll make decisions that aren’t the smartest, but you’ll survive. Even in the last semester before graduation when you think you’re going to drop out or secretly wish to be hit by a car so you won’t have to go to class or finish your homework. This last semester will be hell at times, but you’ll make it through -- hopefully. Here’s the final semester of your college career as an undergrad, as told by “New Girl.”
You think you're doing fine. (AKA you do anything besides homework)
But then you realize that you have three projects, two presentations, and a paper due within the next two weeks. And promptly go through stages of grief, but mostly just denial, eventual anger, and finally at least partial acceptance.
You’ve committed to too much at once.
You’re regretting some of it.
Trying to calm yourself down, you remind yourself that you have only a month left.
But that just makes you panic more.
Because you have no idea what you want to do after school.
You’re getting sad about not living with your best friends or seeing them every day, and not being able to vent face-to-face.
EVERYTHING looms over your head.
When someone tells you that they don’t have any homework to finish or exams to study for, and you judge them. Without holding back.
Avoiding assignments and procrastinating is so common that you get angry at yourself for waiting and putting it off, but then you do it again the next day because it has already become a habit.
Skipping one class to finish writing a paper for another class that is more important is a real occurrence. (Sorry, mom!)
Work is just an added bonus element of stress (multiplied by the number of jobs you have, yay!).
Crying is a strong desire, but you know that you don’t have time for that.
Coffee keeps you going even when you’re studying and writing papers well into the late night and early morning, and you end up creating something that resembles “True American."
You tell yourself that you’ll wake up early to study, but then morning comes and then you snooze your alarm until you have no time to do anything before class.
So you plan ahead next time and decide to stay up extra late and finish it, and then reward yourself with sleep. And sometimes, with all the caffeine, you end up writing something like this.
Weekends are the days when you tell yourself that you’ll get up at a reasonable time to do homework, and then somehow it’s 6 p.m. on Sunday and you haven’t done any.
Staring at a blank wall becomes much more interesting than writing your essay.
Because you’re just thinking about everything you have to do within the coming weeks and screaming internally.
Your to-do list seems so endless. Fifteen items equals never ending, right?
But let’s focus, seniors. We can do this, and we will. Graduation will be here before we know it. EEK. Until then, let's just pretend that we're doing fine. Or wing it until we feel like we're doing okay.
