It’s a new semester! That means new beginnings, new courses, a chance to start over, and all the opportunities in the world! The only problem? Your inability to actually follow through on all the good habits you promised yourself to implement. We all know the story. You start out the semester bright and full of energy, determined to make this semester a good one. You’re organized, go to all of your classes, take notes, complete the homework, etc, etc. You’re a model student. You tell yourself that you will stop your bad habits from last semester and start doing your work early and proactively. However, it doesn’t take long for this to descend into chaos, also known as your life last semester. Here, I will chronicle the rise and fall of the start of a new semester. Don’t worry, you’re not alone!
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1. You arrive back to school, ready to have a great and productive semester! The break has energized you, and you are bursting to the brim with optimism.
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2. All of your school supplies are organized and ready to go. There’s no way you can fail.
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3. The first day of classes comes, and you feel like the smartest college student alive. (Thanks @SyllyWeek)
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4. In fact, you feel SO good, that you start to GET AHEAD on your work. That’s right! Who would have thought?
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5. You are so proud of yourself that you keep up the momentum for a few more days. You have been following your planner, going to class, eating at the appropriate times, and getting a proper amount of sleep. You’re practically a fully functioning human being. Courtesy of Giphy
6. Classes are starting to pick up a bit. But you feel good because it was just so easy earlier this week. You tell yourself that everything will be fine.
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7. You decide that it wouldn’t kill you to take a little break. You’ve been working hard all week, after all! Just one night of not keeping up on your work so you can relax. Tomorrow you’ll get right back to work, and it’ll be great. Courtesy of Giphy
8. Tomorrow.
9. Yea, definitely tomorrow.
10. Tomorrow for sure!
11. Aaaand you suddenly have five deadlines, all set for tonight, and you haven’t started on any of the assignments. What happened?!?! The semester was going so well! There was so much time left to do your work! Courtesy of Giphy
12. It hits you. One college day is equivalent to approximately 15 earth days. The classes you took yesterday are suddenly much harder than you anticipated. While you were drawing basic shapes on the computer in your computer science class last lecture, you’re now building an interactive forum from scratch that can handle real-time interaction with a computer server. Yesterday, you were studying basic anatomy in biology, and today you’re conducting open heart surgery. In calculus…you get the idea.
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13. You are light years behind on your work. It seems insurmountable.
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14. You try desperately to catch up – the semester is still just beginning! You still have time to save it!
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15. You then pull a coffee and energy drink filled all-nighter in an attempt to finish your work. You make all of your deadlines, although barely. You try to catch up on your readings. Time is going by so much more quickly than it should. How is this possible?!
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16. Your alarm goes off. It doesn’t wake you up because you never went to sleep; instead it just annoys you as you lay on the ground in a fetal position. How did you get to this point so quickly? Courtesy of Popkey
17. Reluctantly, you drag yourself to class. Nothing sounds better than going to bed, but you are determined to make it a good semester. You roll into class, without breakfast, in sweatpants and a hoodie. “At least I did the readings,” you try to comfort yourself. Courtesy of Tenor
18. You start the lecture off ready to pay attention. You know the material and it is a perfect opportunity to impress your professor. You can do this.
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19. It doesn’t take long for you to get tired. Last night’s study session is getting to you. You try to fight it, but it feels like your head is filled with bricks. Before you even know what is happening, you have fallen asleep.
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20. When you finally come to, you take a look at your surroundings and see that you are still in class. All around you, students are frantically taking notes and scurrying to catch everything the professor says. You glance at the board, only to see hieroglyphics.
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21. The entire board is filled with academic jargon you couldn’t even have dreamed of existing. The class has gone ahead! This wasn’t in the reading, and you’re not sure what’s happening. Panicking, you try to take notes on what the professor is saying but you aren’t even sure what you’re writing. Your notebook is filled with chicken scratch, indecipherable and incomprehensible. These notes are useless. Courtesy of Giphy
22. You decide to make the executive decision to skip your afternoon class in order to catch up on your morning class. It seems like a logical thing to do. If you just work hard tonight, you can catch up on everything and tomorrow will be fine.
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23. You take a nap. You do not catch up on any work, and it just continues to pile up. Everything you’ve been ignoring is here to haunt you, and it’s all due tomorrow. Once again, you are forced to stay up all night to try and clean up the mess that you created.
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24. When you wake up the next morning, you’ve slept through your morning class and you can’t even remember if you got anything done last night. “Whatever,” you think. “I already missed class,” and you go back to sleep.
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25. It doesn’t take long for you to descend back into a cycle of chaos and pain. This semester, the one you were supposed to ace, is kicking your butt. It’s the second week of the semester, and somehow you’re five weeks behind on work. You sigh, because you can already tell this semester is going to be just like last semester. You really don’t know how to get your life together, and it this point you don’t care. Welcome back to school!
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