As I’m sitting here writing this, I’ve tried out three different ideas I had for this week, but my creative spark just isn’t there right now. My mind keeps wandering today as I think about what life has been like over my second year of college. Personally, I’m at the point where I’m counting the days until I’ll be back home for the summer and just trying to get through these next three weeks of final projects, tests and dealing with the stress that comes from that while also balancing my social life. And honestly, it’s been pretty damn hard sometimes. But that doesn’t mean that college life is an entirely bad experience.
The fast pace of college life makes it hard to keep up with everything happening, especially academically. Each class has its own challenges and demands that must be balanced with every other class you take. It’s especially tough as a journalism major, since I have a lot of constant deadlines for stories I must do and interviews to schedule for those stories. I’m always working on multiple stories at once, which can be stressful to keep track of when they all have different deadlines. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing and strive to do it as much as possible, but it’s not without its headaches.
And then there’s the social aspect. I’ve found that this year, especially earlier in the spring semester, there were more nights than before where I was just hanging out in my dorm with nothing else to do. It’s tough to find stuff to do sometimes since I’m not 21, I don’t have a car up here and college students can be unreliable when it comes to planning things. Plus, the lack of house shows at local DIY music venues this year doesn’t help, since that was a big part of my college experience last year. This doesn’t mean I haven’t had any fun nights this year, as I’ve still found things to do and people to hang out with, but having nothing to do can get frustrating.
But despite these stressors and grievances listed above, I’m still standing better than I ever did to quote the great Elton John. Though college life can be hard to manage and at times unpredictable, it’s that unpredictability that makes it special. I’ve found that my favorite experiences and memories that I have from my time at UConn have happened on a whim when I didn’t have any plans. There’s something thrilling about just rolling with the night and seeing what happens. Whether it’s meeting new people while wandering around campus or getting tossed around in a mosh pit at a random basement show, I’ve ended up having some great times on nights when my expectations were the lowest. Embracing unpredictability has allowed me to get these experiences that I never would have planned or thought I would have.
I’ve also experienced this approach of embracing unpredictability with my writing, and the best example of this is how I ended up in the opinion section of The Daily Campus. Prior to college, I had never been a fan of opinion writing and had no interest in pursuing it. But in my first month on campus in September 2022, I went to my first opinion section meeting after signing up for the email list at the involvement fair on a whim. In that meeting, I loved the idea of the creative freedom the section offered and was intrigued by the idea of becoming a weekly columnist. I walked out of that meeting with the goal of getting hired as a columnist by the end of the semester, which I successfully accomplished. Curating a column has allowed me to develop my writing in a form that I never would have anticipated, all because I went to an opinion meeting just for the hell of it.
My point is this: College life can be stressful and tough a lot of the time, but it’s important to keep an open mind and see where it takes you. And it’s also important to remember that you’re not alone in feeling stressed, anxious or other emotions you may have. Nothing that you’re feeling or going through is permanent: this is where your book begins, the rest is still unwritten.