Hello college stress and day drinking

Ivy Davis, Editor in Chief of the Advocate

Six a.m. and the alarm clock screams into my dreams and ruins my summer.

It’s back-to-school time and I’ve got those back-to-school feels, but not the good ones I got in high school.

In high school, I got one month into my summer and wished I had something to do. I begged my mom to let me go to summer school with my sister. Unfortunately for me, summer school didn’t take 4.0 students.

Now I’m 20, I have bills, I have a job, and a dread of the end of summer. Like many people, I “lived it up” over those short three months  of warmth in Oregon. No matter how much I stuffed into those months, I still come back to college with the feeling of “I could’ve done more.” I question why I didn’t hike four times a week, why I didn’t go to the beach or fly to Mexico.

These last two weeks have been such a transition. I use to work 30-plus hours a week and still have time to do something with my day (which meant watching Netflix in bed at the time). Now I’ve dropped my hours, in preparation, signed up for classes, and started the ball rolling for this newspaper. I no longer have that free time to go home and binge eat salami and Cheez-Its in bed.

Most students can relate to my week: Wake up and go to work, then go to school, go home, eat dinner, work on homework for longer than need be (because I procrastinated during the entire process), and then slip blissfully into sleep – repeat. This schedule would kill most people and quite honestly, I’m surprised it hasn’t done just that to me.

There is a reason for it all, though. We students are just trying to get our degrees and start a career. We want what the staff and faculty of MHCC already have – jobs… and free time.

There are a few things that keep me going. One, I know someday I’ll have a righteous degree, which will get me a righteous job. Once I have that righteous job I won’t have classes, homework, or news stories to follow up on. Two, winter and spring break. Sure, they won’t last long, but in those short weeks you can bet your grandma’s dentures I’ll be cozying up to my dog, eating a loaded baked potato in bed. Three, day drinking is still a thing and it sharpens the writing skills, along with my attention span. You may not believe me fully on this, but one time I did a take-home test drunk and got a 98 percent.

The point is no one is ready to go back to college after three amazing months of sunshine in the Northwest and no homework. However, we are ready to grow up, to pursue our dreams, and to start to live the life we want to – we just have to work and do a little day drinking to get there.

Welcome back, students, staff, and faculty of MHCC.

Advocate Staff