| Editor's Note: Caitlin Emmons is a freshman at the University of California at Santa Cruz. |
| Caitlin's College Blog By: Caitlin Emmons In high school all my friends called sophomore year the “sophomore slump,” you didn’t have the momentum of freshmen newness nor the pressures of a grueling junior year, but college doesn’t allow time for a slump. I started this year running and haven’t stopped since. I am living on my own, taking three upper division classes (will define later), dealing with the financial aid office and still trying to have a life. While this has been by far one of the most stressful times of my life it has also been one of the most enlightening. First, living alone is scary. Don’t get me wrong, I adore my housemate, my apartment and my garden, but paying rent, buying groceries and living with a landlord makes the whole thing a bit less glorious. I had always thought my financial aid package would provide me with a comfy little living allowance and thus less stress about paying my own rent every month, unfortunately for me… my financial aid package has yet to be processed by UC Santa Cruz and thus that little cushion has yet to come through. More unfortunate is that my rent is $250 more a month than my paycheck and that is before groceries and utilities. This has made it imperative for me to get another job. But last time I checked we are still in a recession and let me tell you, college students trying to get jobs right now are at a huge disadvantage. People are not trying to hire right now, most of them are just working on not having to fire people. So how am I managing? I am cutting back… big time. No longer do I get a latte a day, which was $21 a week that I no longer have. Pasta is a cheap and frequent meal at my house. And now I am looking for a second job. One advantage college students have over high school students is more flexibility in their schedule. Right now I have free Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, so I have applied for every job I can think of. I try to get nanny/babysitting jobs because they are the most flexible and often pay fairly well. But you have to bear in mind that other people are applying, so having a resume is a great bonus. I spent hours this weekend building mine. I sat down and wrote out all the jobs I had ever had and made sure they were on my resume. Now I finally feel like I am a few steps ahead of my fellow student body. Second, heavy workloads are do-able. I am taking three upper division classes (College Lingo Breakdown: upper division classes are smaller, more intense and require more reading than their lower division counterparts. You generally take upper division classes only in your major, but seeing as I have decided to do a double major my whole schedule is full of these classes). This means I have hundreds of pages to read and sadly there is not too much overlap in my classes despite the fact that they are in the same departments. The key to surviving this load is not just a pound of coffee a week, but planning ahead. If I have a paper due in a class I will focus on that and postpone doing some other reading. The problem is all of these classes are discussion based so I do have to have some idea about what’s going on in all my classes all the time. This is where overlap would come in handy, but seeing as there is none I would say I make sure I get at least 50% of my reading done before every class so that I can make at least one comment on the author or the theories being discussed. Third, having a life is hard but necessary. I have said it before but you have got to make time for your friends. Meet between classes, see a movie, do dinners; get out of the library and see other people! I live with my best friend, so I got that part covered but I have found it harder and harder to see the other people I used to see everyday. I decided to start calling people when I have 20 free minutes because a few minutes is better than no minutes. If you can’t always make time to see people, find something that will make you happy to do everyday. Maybe this is a bit extreme, but my housemate and I got kittens. It means that everyday I come home, no matter how bad my day has been, I have something to curl up with. And my goodness, they are adorable! Yes, they may also eat away some of my very precious funds, but I think at the end of the day it’s worth it. |
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