The College Life

Wow, we are getting ready to receive our midterms in about a week. Can you believe that we have been in college that long? I still remember getting here August 20^th and calling my new roommate to tell her that I was pulling into campus. She moved in the day before me. Then since all the other people from my high school also moved in the day before me…I called all of them to tell them I was pulling into the Slusher parking lot. Three of my best friends, my new roommate, and my mentor all met me by the car and helped me carry all of my stuff in. I loved how everyone made fun of how much stuff I brought in and now they are starting to use all of it. For example, I brought folding chairs and everyone was like why would we need those and they are up almost every day for visitors. That night I went off with my friends to see the hypnotist. That was a great show…my roommate and I did everything together the first weekend…we went to all the Hokie Hi activities from Star Trek to the Beach Bash. Ever since then we have been doing everything together and have not been apart since. I am so grateful that we get along so well and do not fight. It still amazes me to this day how they matched us up because we think just alike and have so much in common. We did not even plan it but our room matches perfectly. It probably helped that we both shopped at Target for our college stuff. When we were buying the college accessories we did not know each other nor did we know both of us were shopping at Target.

When we first found out who our roommate is I was on vacation in Ocean City, Maryland (my mom and I go there every year, I have been going since I was four years old). I did not have my computer so I had to wait until that Friday to talk to my new roommate. That night getting on Facebook, I checked and had a friend request from her. We talked that night and again the next day. The first question I asked her was “do you like pink?” To my luck she said “yes” and all the stuff she bought for the dorm room was pink too. That was so nice because all I bought was pink. I mean our room matches perfectly. One of my biggest fears after buying all the dorm accessories was that she hates pink with a passion. I am so happy that that was false and everything worked out.

During the first week of getting to know each other and not having a lot of homework in my classes, I made a lot of friends and joined a lot of clubs. The extracurricular activities helped me to make new friends. As I said last week, even though I went to college with my best friends, I still view college as a new adventure, a nice comfortable facility to learn who you are, and a place where you can learn what you want to do for the rest of your life. Because of this reason, I am not hanging out with my friends from high school all the time. I do hang out with my best friends that live down the hall but we also hang out with some of my friends I met from swing dancing and various activities.

Hanging out with all my new friends a lot is fun. The phrase, however, is so true, college/ engineering students get two out of three…sleep, homework, or social life. Trying to balance all three is really hard for me. I think time management is probably one of the biggest problems I am having. The first couple weeks of college I defiantly chose homework and social life. Not sleeping did not end well so I tried to switch to homework and sleep. It really stinks because I want to hang out with my friends too. There are people in my room right now (my roommate and I have the same friends) because my roommate does not have homework for tomorrow, so I said I would leave and go to a study room to do mine. It is really crazy because we are both in Hypatia (the girl engineering living community) so you would think we would have the same work load but we do not. She had a lot of AP credits from high school and I did not take my AP credits from high school thinking it will help me adjust to college easier. So she has some electives and core classes where I have the basic freshman load. I do not know how it happened but I tend to have more homework than she does. She is an amazing roommate though because when I have homework and she does not she will just sit on her side of the room and is quiet. I really do appreciate that.

Another problem I have with time management is saying no to activities that are not more important than homework. For awhile now I would always tell myself that it is not due tomorrow so I can go out now and do the assignment tomorrow or the day before it is do. That is a bad idea and a horrible mind set to get into. After I learned from my mistakes, I try to do my assignments at least a day before it is due and not wait until the last minute. The good thing is that I found I work better at night than during the day; the only problem is my friends work better during the day than the night. That makes it hard, but I am still figuring it out. It is still the first semester.

Living on my own without my mom, not time management, is what I thought would be the hardest thing adjusting to college because my mom did everything for me. I am adjusting a lot better than I thought because I like the freedom and living on my own. Do not get me wrong I still miss her a lot but I can always call/skype/email her and that helps.

I know the first five weeks I have learned a lot, not just school work, but all the other things my mom did that I did not realize she did. I think I miss most her dragging me out of bed every morning. Just remember to have fun in college, do not lock yourself up in a room because half the college experience is the social aspect. When you find the perfect solution to balancing all three homework, sleep, and social life, please let me know.