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This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Lynn chapter.

In your senior year as I have mentioned in previous articles, is the year where you try to max out all of your college experiences. It’s the year where you realize oh damn after this year I have to enter the real adult world. When your life forever changes and you start to live new experiences. Maybe you’re like me and your senior year where you still want to excel in your classes and have fun, adventurous things with your friends, but you also realize you need to build a foundation for yourself after graduation. So for me what I did was I got a full-time job while in college.

I don’t exactly know why I waited for my senior year, the year where you are most likely going to be the busiest in college to get a job. It’s weird for me that as I have no set plan for after graduation or what career path I want to take, so why not get a job where I’m not only learning about the industry I will most likely go into, but also an opportunity to save money. My goal after graduation is to travel and go and explore new places, while I am still young and hopefully during this time, I can figure out what career path I want to take. This is something different for me as I’ve always devoted my time to my studies. My parents always told me to never take my eye off the main goal, which is to get my degree. So a lot of things have changed recently.

From just having classes each day and having lots of free time to do my assignments, social things, and my favorite thing of all to cook. Now a lot of my free time is occupied with a job. My day to day now consists of going to work for between 6 to 8 hours a day, class, doing my homework, and most of all finding time to eat. This was a big adjustment for me although I do love to keep busy. This was a new type of busy. I have now learned that on my two days off each week, I need to prepare meals, as I will most likely not eat during the week and I am not trying to eat takeout every day. So I prepare my lunches and dinners for the four or five days that I work during the week. This allows me to ensure that I am still getting a nutritious healthy meal amongst all the chaos.

It is only been three weeks since I started this job, and I must say it is most definitely an experience of responsibility. I have to now learn to navigate every single minute of my day to ensure that I am on top of everything. For me, and all of this the most important thing is sleep, I have always been the person who goes to bed early and I love to start my day early, so this is something I am willing to keep up. I always ensure that I’m getting my total eight hours of sleep every night, and this means learning to put off certain things till the next day. Because in my opinion, if you’re not getting enough sleep, you won’t be able to do all the tasks you need to do throughout the day. So sleep is my number one priority especially when I start work at 7 AM and only get home from class around 8 PM each night.

This is the path I chose to take in my senior year, is it the right one? I have no idea, but only time will tell and you always have to put yourself out there to test your capabilities and strengths. You will be surprised at how far you can push yourself out of your comfort zone. And there’s all this chaos going on now my main priorities are to stay on top of my assignments, eat nutritious meals and, get eight hours of sleep because as I said my main goal is my degree and this is what works for me. So let me know do you have a job well done in college? If you do, what are your priorities and how do you stay on top of your responsibilities?

Lauren is an international student majoring in Hospitality Management. She is a very interactive, positive and friendly young lady who always gives of her best. She always wears a smile on her face and tries brighten up everyone’s day. She is very passionate about her home country and educating many young people about her beloved country.