Sarah

Hey Hawkeyes,

You know how time can feel like it’s going so slowly but then you look back and you have no idea where the time went? That’s pretty much what’s been going on. In the week before Thanksgiving break I had a ton of homework due and a test each week with three right before Thanksgiving break. But I also found some time to have fun too. College can be stressful and you really need to balance school and fun. Sometimes it can be tough when you’re living in the dorm because you feel like you’re always at school. If you make the most of college though, the dorms can actually become the best thing. You always have people to study with. My engineering friends and I have Thermo Thursday where we all get together and work on the Thermodynamics assignment together since it’s due Friday. We all try to start it a little bit early so we can compare answers and rework problems if there’s a discrepancy in the answers, but let’s be honest, most of us start that night. Here’s one of our Thermo Thursday parties.

I wish I had the picture from the Thermo Thursday a couple weeks after this one; we had so many people we ended up in the lounge with 4 tables pushed together and some people on the floor.

Sometimes you have to reward yourself when you’ve been working hard. My reward for working hard/finally taking a break from homework, class, and tests was to see the musical “Wicked” in Chicago. The Campus Activities Board(CAB) organized a trip to see the musical on a Saturday night. We got on the bus at 3pm and arrived home at 3:30am the next morning. It was a long night, but so much fun. I was so glad to have friends go with me too!

I tried to convince myself that I would do homework on the bus there, but then we watched “The Wizard of OZ” and “Rent”, so homework didn’t really happen. It was a great relaxing weekend and I absolutely loved seeing “Wicked”. This trip was my first time ever seeing it and it was awesome! I couldn’t have been more excited for this trip; now I want to go see it again.

The weekend after “Wicked” was the last home game for this football season. Remember my last post where I said games were getting colder?

Well, this last home game was pretty cold. Actually, it was really cold! Everyone was bundled up. I hadn’t had the chance to bring my snowboots and as it turns out, regular shoes just don’t keep your feet warm even when you’re wearing three layers of socks.

Going home after the game was definitely one of the best feelings ever. Just something about knowing you have an entire week of no class, no turning in homework, and finally getting caught up on sleep is simply exciting. I heard some first years talking about going home for the first time and I realized that as a first year, I hadn’t really thought about what it would be like going home for the first time since I live so close. However, I realized that everything they were saying was just as true for me as it was for them, even now as a sophomore. So why is going home in college so different? Well,

1. Driving a car for the first time after being gone for weeks or even months is one of the weirdest things. My friends and I were all used to driving to school and driving to all our activities. Now in college, we walk every where or take a bus. When we finally get home, climbing into a car can seem strangely strange. You wouldn’t think it would feel so weird, but it does.

2. Homework should really be done over a weekend of going home, but it normally just doesn’t happen. Even over long breaks like Thanksgiving(although this break, I actually did quite a bit of homework), it’s really hard to get motivated to do homework.

3. Sleep is an amazing thing and nothing it better than being able to sleep in your own bed again. Something about being home, or even just going home, is calming and puts you to sleep right away. One of the first-years I was talking to  said that since she lived 3 hours away she was going to do homework on the ride there and back so she could finish her homework without having to actually do it at home. This is a combination of both point 2 and point 3. She said she got in the car and she just fell asleep right away. Then she didn’t do the homework at home, slept on the way back, and stayed up way too late trying to finish the homework.

Those are probably the three top things that everyone deals with, so don’t feel like you’re the only one struggling with motivation or think you’re a bad student for not doing homework when you go home. You can definitely fix those issues, but you don’t have to feel alone either.

Until next time, Hawkeyes, stay warm!

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 7th, 2013 at 10:49 pm and is filed under Academics, Campus Life, General, Photos, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.