I love college. I love the late night study sessions where I giggle more than I study. I love the freedom of getting to get up and go anywhere, do anything at any given moment. I love laying on my friend’s dorm room floors and laughing so hard I cry. I love eating junk food and then complaining about the stomach pain an hour later.
I do not love, however, remembering that I am a four hour flight away from home. I do not love knowing that my family is making memories without me. I do not love seeing my local friends pick up and drive the 45 minutes home when they don’t feel like doing their laundry or figuring out what they should eat for dinner.
Who was going to tell me that doing my laundry was so difficult? The physical act of walking down four flights of stairs and putting it into the machine is not the challenging part. Instead, carving time out of my schedule to ensure I have enough time to do all of my loads and knowing that I have to do it again in a week is enough to send me into a spiral.
At home, I always had a support system to take care of the small things. To wash my water bottle when it was on the verge of growing bacteria, to cut up fruit for me when I had a bad day, to DO MY LAUNDRY when I did not feel like it. Here, I have to be my own parent. I only have myself to blame when I run out of socks to wear or when my water bottle takes on a mysterious odor. Here I have to be responsible for my homework, my extracurricular activities, my social life, and my day to day needs. This is the hardest part of college for me.
It’s not the challenging academics, it’s not the making friends, and it’s not the busy schedule, it’s the taking time for myself. Taking time for yourself does not just mean taking a break from your responsibilities anymore, you can’t really afford to do that completely. You need to find a way to build yourself up and take care of the small things. You need to remember to charge your electric toothbrush, you need to remember to change your sheets, and you need to remember to go to the gym.
While the freedom can be addicting, the best balance of my tasks has been remembering to do the small things. My Google calendar has a million and one tasks set on it, and they are not just my homework assignments but also my menial tasks. One on it right now is fold your laundry! At home, I never had to think about these types of things but here at school, doing these tasks has weighed heavier on my mind. I’m so grateful to have had the support system to do it in the first place, but now, believe it or not, I actually enjoy taking out my trash.
There’s something so satisfying about knowing that these tasks actually mean something. There is a weight to them that signifies, I’m growing up. And I can do anything that I set my mind to, including my laundry.