I always feel an intense pang of annoyance whenever frustrations regarding the overwhelming emotions that college brings me (more often than not) are deemed ineligible or unworthy of complaints. "Real adulthood" is much worse, my elders insist, so enjoy the college years while you have them — as if its a leisurely journey in its entirety.

I would first like to note, that as a rule of thumb, I have always been told for every one hour credit taken, you should expect three hours of outside of class study time if you want to understand the material and do well in the class. For example, if you have a three-credit course, you would spend three hours in this class plus an expected nine hours that week in study and homework time. That is 12 total hours for one three-credit class. OK, so that's slightly terrifying, but not unbearable. Right?

Well, considering a student's full-time course load is composed of 12 credits, let's multiply that number by four, giving us a whopping 48 hours expected to have our faces in the book or fingers on the keyboard. Well, college IS your full-time job, they'll preach. That's comparable to the 40+ hour work weeks that we "real adults" have to maintain. That is what we college students are here for, after all. But let's not forget that many students need to hold a minimum of 15 credits in order to reap their benefits for financial aid, in which case, those weekly school hours get bumped up to 60.

To keep up with this, we may need an adequate amount of sleep to sustain ourselves. What is recommended is 7.5 to 9 hours of sleep a night for optimal functioning. Let's calculate with 7.5, just to be reasonable. I mean, after all, we pretty are busy.

In this same week, filled so far with 60 hours dedicated to homework, another 52.5 are meant to be allotted for necessary rest-time. (Although I am convinced that this thing called "sleep" is a myth considering I haven't seen much of it in the past four years. But for statistics sake we will humor this number). If you're counting, that's 112.5 hours simply for sleeping and studying.

We need to eat and exercise in order to keep a healthy body that will accompany that healthy mind! Breakfast, lunch, and dinner (HA!). After a caffeine induced state of repressed hunger, sometimes we remember to do that. Who has time to cook, though, realistically. An hour or two daily in order to cook a hearty (expensive but healthy) meal, as well as eat it is completely preposterous (which is why often we'd rather indulge, instead, in greasy and cheap McDonald's or the infamous ramen noodle/mac and cheese delicacies). Leading to malnourishment, inability to think straight and the dreaded "freshman 15." Lovely. What nourishment to keep us energized for the (minimum) 30 minutes of exercise that they say we should maintain daily. Tack on this 3.5 hours of working out per week (again, I say, HA) in order to keep our body functioning.

Yet, this recorded time for school, sleeping, and eating/physical activity, these functions are only the bare essentials. Considering the unreal amount of debt that most of us accumulate through the means of housing, tuition, books and food, not to mention other bills and perhaps (heaven forbid) even a little spent on entertainment and fun, you just might need a job on top of that.

To those of you in which your parents supply all, or most, of these funds so to these stressors you do not apply, kudos. Please be extremely grateful for this support and the load off of your back in your pursuits to bettering yourself. Many of us, though, do not have this luxury, resulting in work being added into this equation. Clearly, bills vary; however, depending on the expenses that you are paying for your dorm/apartment/house, amount financial aid that has covered (even if it is just for the time being — damn double-edged sword that is the loan), other essentials such as food and household necessities, your hobbies/activities, and parent contribution, it is very probable that you can find yourself trying to juggle a 20-40 hour per week job just to sustain yourself.

Considering, since we are clearly still unqualified on our path to our someday-careers, entry level jobs that pay sub-par at best are usually the pool in which we swim for this sustenance — this may lead to being tilted more toward the 40-hour scale rather than the 20. Again, though, for the sake of accounting the bare minimum required of us, let's go with 20 hours per week of work (for those of us who must.) That makes us at an official 136-139 hours consumed (including the unspecified amount of time for cooking and eating above.)

We can't slack on the extracurriculars, either. Grades aren't everything, they remind us. Our future employers are going to want to see that we are involved in other activities that show the skills that we possess outside of the classroom to ensure our sufficiency in the workplace. Volunteer work, sports, sororities/fraternities, clubs, research, shadowing, internships (paid or not). For statistical sake, let's guess that these may take 10-20 hours a week, an EXTREMELY rough estimate and average between the widely ranging hours that can far exceed this amount with involvement in more than one of the above listed, the commitment and strictness of the activity or activities you choose, and so many other factors that aren't accounted for within these guesstimates. That brings us to a whopping 159 hours per week that we can trace, but the list goes on and on. Oh, did I mention that there are only 168 hours in one week?

What about commuting to and from school and work, whether it be a time-consuming drive or walk? What about going home to visit our parents and family, or old friends at other colleges? What about the hours where we are supposed to "find ourselves," explore life options, make new friends, go to parties, watch Netflix, adventure and explore the city, spend time with our significant other (or go on dates to get to know one, for that matter) or simply relish in our alone time with a good book and a bath? Where are those hours? More importantly, would someone please like to explain what kind of super-humans they expect us to be in order to be "successful" on a schedule like this? Not only to be successful, but to maintain our health, our appearance, and our SANITY.

With that said, the purpose of this article was to address two groups of people. First, those who forgot what it was like to be in our shoes, or never had to be—cut us a break, would you? We are being pulled about 10 different ways at any and every given moment, and simply learning day by day (ahem, hour by hour) how to balance it all to the best of our ability.

Secondly, college students, I offer you a toast, with my cup filled with either coffee or wine (you'll never know which) due to the fact that, somehow, we survive these crazy four (or more) years after all. If nobody told you today, your stresses are justified and you are doing a great job.