It’s been so long since I last wrote a blog post that I’m not even sure where to start. I’ve been meaning and wanting to write for weeks now, but college life is a busy life, and I’ve been unable to pinpoint what exactly I want to say and get across. It’s one in the morning now though, and I can’t sleep— aka: perfect blogging time. (Don’t worry, Mom. My first class wasn’t until 4:00, I got eight hours of sleep that night.)

As I was laying in my bed, in my dorm room, in the still, quiet darkness, all of two minutes ago, I felt wide awake. My mind is racing over the whirlwind of the past eight weeks, and the fact that I haven’t taken much time to reflect on all of the new experiences, in particular, continues to plague me.

Maybe it’s just me, but I pictured myself coming to college and having all of these new experiences and growing so much as a person because of them. I’ve had lots of amazing experiences thus far, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like the growth part of the equation just hasn’t happened. Even with dropping the extra science I had picked up during orientation week (bringing me down from 20 hours to 16), keeping up with all of the work has been the most challenging part of college thus far. Really, the stress of school isn’t anything new, it just seems to be more frustrating in a college environment; when friends are going to a swimming hole or squeezing half the hall into one of the dorm rooms to watch a movie together, and you’re in your room working endlessly to just get the next day’s work done, it’s frustrating.

Finding the right balance between studies and socializing is hard. Just this past weekend, I finally didn’t work through the entire weekend, spending time with family and my hall instead. In class tonight, our professor checked in and asked how everyone was doing and how stress levels were. Most of us admitted that the class we were sitting in at the time has been our biggest source of stress. Hearing that the heaviest reading assignments were now done was music to our ears.

I’ve fallen into a habit of putting things on the back-burner for processing later on, but later on never comes. It’s hard to know when to just put homework aside and take sometime to rest and reflect. I, for one, have a really hard time relaxing when there’s work to be done. The issue is that there will always be homework to do— it’s overwhelming when you think about it in terms of only getting a break when there is no more homework.

Fall Break is here though, and I’m looking forward to having a few days to catch up and (ideally) work ahead, rest, and most exciting: be home! (My roommate got to hear about how terribly much I missed the dogs about ten thousand times a day. Bless her.)

Hopefully I’ll get a couple more posts up before the end of the semester.