It never ends... until graduation by Julie

The life of a college student can be crazy. Parents don't realize that a full-time student normally has enough work to equate it to a full-time job. Add in work-study, clubs and organizations, sports, and even outside jobs and sometimes even I am amazed at the way we get things done. I'm not advocating lack of sleep, by the way. But knowing how to best balance your sleep with your college career and still be able to function afterward will help you be successful in college and after.

That being said, this semester has been nuts. Classes, papers, midterms, meetings upon meetings upon even more meetings, conferences, and still trying to have time to have a social life have made me feel like I am behind in most everything (even when I am not). Sometimes it is easy to get frustrated when it looks like everyone around you is just goofing off, and other times you really cherish the moments you get to goof off yourself.

And then comes that moment when you can take a big sigh of relief, look at what you have accomplished, and declare it good enough. That moment came for me a couple weeks ago. I had caught up on all of my assignments, got my final pieces of my application into my potential transfer schools, and still have time to write. Now I am sitting back, looking at all that I have accomplished in the last two and a half years and realized... life really is good.

When you have that diploma in your hands, you will look at it and realize how lucky you are to have had all of the opportunity you have been given during your experience. You forget all of the struggle, late nights with papers, lab makeup sessions, and chasing your professors around. I think at that point we also realize that for as many times as we were sure it would never end, it really just did. A new door is opening, and that is what college can do for us. It opens doors into this big awesome world that so many students want to save.