If I’m not mistaken, it’s (almost) time for seniors to work on their college applications…looking back, it seems like a long time ago when I was writing my essays and figuring out how to fill out the many different apps, even though it was just last year. Quite a lot has changed since then.
Heads up to the juniors and seniors in high school: in college, time gets a little warped. One huge difference between college and high school for me is that I don’t really have a completely structured day anymore.
In high school, I had 6 classes a day, followed by after school activities (usually yearbook or Model United Nations or musical rehearsal or soccer practice or some other group), then it was go-home-eat-dinner-and-get-as-much-homework-done-before-I-fall asleep-on-my-books time.
Here in college, I have the basic framework—my 5 classes throughout the week, so about 2-3 eighty-minute classes per day—and everything else fits around it. I’ve been trying to attend university-wide events (football games, RUPA (Rutgers University Programming Association, it’s kind of like student council) events), attend meetings with the awesome SEBS Pre-Med/Pre-Dental society, join my Christian youth group on Friday nights, and of course, find time to relax on my own and hang out with my friends and neighbors here in Bunting-Cobb. In fact, the other day, my roommate and neighbor and I had a little movie night. We watched Labyrinth (it’s a pretty old movie). It was fun. :D Oh, and to avoid the dreaded Freshman 15, my friends and I are trying to go to the gym at least a few times a week…depending on how many other things we have to do (ahem, homework). Top that with housekeeping duties, like laundry and getting around to doing the dishes and washing the utensils that have been lying around for a week or so… (haha, just kidding!).
One additional factor to consider is the commute time, since all but one of my classes are on College Ave., and the traffic gets pretty congested around 9:30am and 5-7pm, which, coincidentally, is the time I need to be leaving for class and leaving from class. Fantastic. I’ve also learned to leave about half an hour before class starts even though the commute doesn’t necessarily take 30 minutes. Sometimes the buses pull away just before you get there, and sometimes they don’t come on time; trust me, I learned those from experience.
The hardest part, I must say, is not having enough time in a day. There are way too many interesting events on campus; it’s challenging to figure out what groups I want to join and what talks I want to attend, as well as make sure I get my homework and studying done, in addition to finding time to unwind and socialize. Note to self: You can’t do everything. All you ambitious high-schoolers out there: you might have been able to balance four or five or more extracurricular activities, but not here. It’s tricky juggling everything…which brings us to our title.
We’d probably have a lot more time if we didn’t need to sleep—like the people in the town of Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude—but, for better or for worse, we do. As crazy as it sounds, I think most of us would rather fill our day with more activities than more time for z’s. I remember in high school I crammed my days so full that, by the time I finished my homework, I would only get a few hours of sleep before the cycle repeated itself the following day. Yeah, seniors, the bad habits carry over, and they’re not too effective; it might be a good idea to start getting more sleep and learn to study instead of cram.
My goals for the semester: sleep 8 hours per night (not quite there yet…I have quite a bit to catch up on, actually, as do most people I know), exercise 3 hours per week (maybe I have 2 hours a week), study hard and learn the material for all my classes, and make time to do everything else I want to do. It’s tough balancing everything and getting all my work done on time, but I’m sure I’ll have some more experience and hopefully better advice by the end of this term. :) All the best with your applications, seniors!
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