And just like that, another school year has begun. With two weeks of my sophomore year already completed, I can say with a good amount of confidence just how excited I am to be pursuing this next chapter of my life.

So many things are looking up for me. However, I’ve found some pros and cons to my overwhelming feeling of excited-ness from these last few months. To summarize this feeling, I’ve basically never felt more confident in my life’s path. I’m growing more and more fond of what I’m learning in school, I moved into my very first apartment, I start working at Northside Bistro again soon, I’m going through sorority recruitment (more details about this later once everything is official), I’m co-directing social media for a really great online magazine here on campus, and have an interview later this week for a ~second~ (really awesome) job opportunity.

Being so immersed with all of this excitement has been such a great feeling, but it has caused some parts of me feeling significantly drained. I put off writing, and even thinking about, this first blog post for weeks because I couldn’t find anything specific I wanted to create. I had writer’s block. But while sitting here, in my first apartment, struggling to culminate an interesting topic for my readers because there are just too many interesting things for me to talk about isn’t something I should necessarily see as a problem.

I’ve sought out inspiration countless times these last 14+ days by taking, what I think are, visually pleasing and interesting pictures of what I’ve been “view”-ing on campus. None of the pictures I captured seemed to relate to one another other; it was all sporadic. I’ll show you what I mean. Here are just a few examples of these random, exciting moments I’ve had recently.

Looking ahead at my sophomore year academically, I’m not nearly as thrilled as I was freshman year. That’s not to say that I’m not excited at all, because I am! It’s just that the coursework and framework of education, in general, are no longer new to me. It almost feels as if this is an extension of my freshman year, I’m just taking way fewer general education courses and getting into the core classes of my major.

Finding balance is going to be my goal, for first semester at least. I can already tell that my plate is getting full, but that’s kinda the way I like it. I bought my first ~real~ planner since early high-school so I’m going to try putting it to use more in an attempt at adult-ing. Not going to lie, I’ve had at least two I-Have-No-Idea-How-To-Adult” meltdowns since moving back a month ago; the #struggle was #real. Nonetheless, I will survive and hopefully gain a little bit more knowledge in that field this year, too.

I predict full-schedules, late-nights studying, and stress-filled moments. But I also predict growth in my work experience, academic life, personal life and social life. I’ve seen and learned a lot in my time as a Hawkeye so far, this was just a preview of what I think is to come.

❊    ❊     ❊    ❊    ❊    ❊    ❊

Thank you so much for reading! Feel free to check out my personal blog and personal social media accounts to get a glimpse into my life as a Hawkeye on more of an everyday basis 🙂

https://freshhawk.wordpress.com

@rachel_crack

❊ Twitter・Instagram ・Snapchat ❊