By Nicholas Kingsbury
The weather changes, we get short-changed, and we change our underwear. Change can seem mundane, but it truly is one of the hardest things to deal with and adjust to. College is a major time of change and that can be very scary. Living away from home for the first time and sharing your room with a stranger are some of the most difficult things to conquer when you get to college. You’re given much more control over your daily life. No more running back to Momma to fix that little issue you have with a late paper or a difficult teacher-it’s now your job to take care of the stumbling blocks that come along. And in this sense, college is only half about the classes and grades.
Your new boatload of responsibilities can be a little overwhelming. You alone are in charge of getting all your work done, feeding yourself, getting enough sleep, staying on the right track, etc. Many new college students cannot deal with that new power and make major mistakes. I’ve seen students just stop doing their required work because no one is forcing them to do it, thus wasting away an entire year of time and money. Alcohol and drugs are suddenly readily available, and many students are unable to fight the temptation. And this way they get a head start on the deterioration of their lives. How lovely.
But we can’t always look at a change in the wind as a negative thing. It depends on how you look at the situation. Granted, a catastrophic shift in the Earth’s polarity in 2012 could potentially make for a bad weekend. But let’s leave Nostradamus out of this for the moment. Not everything new is necessarily a bad thing.
Do you suddenly have a mountain of questionable-smelling clothes rising out of the corner of your dorm room, which is beginning to resemble a bomb-test site? Well, that’s just incentive for you to start picking up after yourself in ways that teach you to be more self-sufficient.
Listen guys, girls love a man who at least appears to have control over his life-and that includes scrubbing that crusty substance off the toilet seat. Has your roommate just found the girl of his dreams, and now you find yourself ‘sexiled’ from your room three nights a week? Take this as an opportunity to show your assertive side while keeping the peace. You both have a right to that room and there are a myriad of other places the two lovebirds can bump feathers. Neither of you should feel uncomfortable or taken advantage of in one of your only slices of sanctuary. As they say, people-management skills are vital to any career.
But what do you do when it really hits the fan? Daunting 15-page research paper on your plate? Just got dumped? Bad news from home? It can seem impossible to see particularly big obstacles in any kind of positive sense sometimes. What you need to do is put things into perspective. Once you do that, you can see what they truly are: temporary speed bumps. It’s part of being young to view adversity as the end of the world. I’m most certainly guilty of it. But if you can only step back, even for a moment, and look at the bigger picture, maybe things won’t be as devastating as they seem after all. Plus, there is that age-old cliché to have in mind: what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger-just ask Kanye West.
When it comes to coping with the stress of change, be strong and take it one day at a time. Just know that everyone is dealing with similar issues and try to let that comfort you. You are not alone. When it comes to the temptations of change, use your own judgment (because no one knows you as well as you know yourself), but don’t use that as an excuse to be an idiot. Remember, you have willpower and self-control. Use it and avoid throwing yourself down a deep, dark hole. Don’t let change be your enemy and downfall. Use it as a vehicle for growth and you’ll be fine.
Nicholas Kingsbury is a sophomore economics student. You may e-mail him at [email protected].