Maddison's Musings

I start college tomorrow. I wish I could say I'm stress-free and as cool as a cucumber, but I'm more like what happens if you take a cucumber and squeeze the living daylights out of it until it's just a soggy mush. I've spent the last twelve hours or so frantically trying to adjust my schedule after coming to the realization that an 8 am class would be complete hell for me. I decided that I wanted to do a test run of all my classes yesterday, and waking up at 6:15 am was not fun. I procrastinated leaving for a while, so I left around 7 am, and of course there was an accident, so traffic sucked and I didn't make it to school until 8:10 am. Thank God I decided to do the test run, because if it was the real first day, I would have been late. I walked around campus for an hour, finding all my classes and cursing the heat. According to my phone, I walked over two miles and climbed nine flights of stairs. But at least I found all my classes, so now I know where they are when I go tomorrow.

Everything was all good until I made it back to my car and started heading home. The drive home was a rough one for me. All of a sudden, I got hit with wave after wave of anxiety. I had to stop and pull over at some random gas station to collect myself. Thoughts like "I don't want to go to college" "Why am I even here" "Do I really want to be a journalist" "How can I be a writer if I've been in a constant state of writer's block for years" etc kept plaguing me. It was rough. By the time I pulled into my driveway, I just sat there and cried for a bit, still trying to get rid of my nausea. After that, I tried to calm myself down by watching The Office and talking to my mom, which worked fairly well. After a while, we went to Target and Marshalls together where we bought some fall stuff.

Last night, I thought about changing my schedule. I wanted to see if I could do some online classes, which would free up my schedule. I ended up dropping one class (because who signs up for 16 hours their first semester) and switching one class on campus for an online version, and now I'm feeling much better. Now, my first class begins at 10 am, which is way more doable than 8 am. I wish I could say all of my stress is gone, but at least 85% of it is now. I'm still generally stressed, since it's a new school and new classes, but now it's more just first day jitters instead of being a complete anxious mess.

Hopefully, classes go well tomorrow, and the rest of the semester, but for now, I'm going to continue to spend my last day of freedom in bed. Are any of you in college yet, or do you still have a bit of time until you go back? Let me know in the comment section below, and if you're an upper classmen, or someone who already graduated, do you have any tips for incoming freshman?