By Melanie HaidColumnist

No matter how much you do in high school, regardless of how organized you were or how shiny your GPA was, college is something that you can never completely prepare for. Sure, the freedom is great, but living away from home, sharing a room with another person and the workload (aka absolute insanity) are enough of a drastic change to question anyone’s sanity a bit.

I have no idea if this transition was so hard for me because I’m a first-generation student, just because I’m a freshman or because I simply stress myself out too much. Either way, all I can hope is that it gets easier at some point, but I suppose all that the future really holds is a 9-5 and lots of taxes.

I didn’t really think I’d miss my family too much, but after a few weeks, I felt a little homesick and FaceTimed with my mom. I was met with the panting face of my dog, who ran over and licked the phone giddily when I said her name. I hadn’t seen her in over a month, so there may have been a few tears shed in the cafeteria, nothing too dramatic, but I’ll leave it to your imagination.

I’m taking the average five classes now that meet twice a week or less, yet somehow I am struggling more now than I ever did in high school, even having done track, newspaper and numerous other activities then, which makes no sense to me.

I terrify myself at the thought of almost continuing sports into college and I sincerely apologize to every athlete because I have no idea how do you do it. I almost did it, but now I don’t think I could’ve – I can barely drag myself to the gym to run two miles and do a mediocre ab workout three times a week.

Life is a constant cycle of class, homework, eating and the occasional nap – but I suppose the few hours of non-school set aside on the weekends is all the fun you need, right? Being a zombie isn’t fun when waking up in the morning now is a thousand times harder although high school was significantly earlier, and my sleep schedule tragically passed away around the third week of school.

And of course, no one has the same sleep schedule or has class at the same time. I’m close with my roommate, but I was not prepared for what it would be like to share a room with someone. I can’t imagine not getting along with your roommate; even if you’re inseparable, there’s bound to be some complications.

Believe me, whether I went here or an Ivy League, no one ever said it was going to be easy, but they left out the parts about how taxing it is to go to college. It’s different for everyone, but I’m motivated by my position as a first-generation student and know that these many late nights and early mornings will be worth it after a few years.

Post college, after many years of crippling debt, I like to picture myself petting my future dog on a Sunday morning and eating waffles – everyone has different ways of dealing with stress, but once you figure out what motivates you, you’ll find that it won’t have been for nothing and your blood, sweat and many tears will pay off … right?

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