Every freshman is warned before starting college about how much work they will have to do for their classes.  What no one tells you, though, is that the amount of work isn’t the real problem.  The transition to college life is intense, and one of the hardest things to get used to is the number of distractions that are all around you.
You live with other people now.  In high school, you could always go home, lock yourself in your room, and study for a few solid hours before the distractions took over.  When you try to do that in college, you encounter a bit of a snag; there’s another person who lives in your room now.  Either you like them and spend all of your time talking and then sending each other buzzfeed posts when you should be working, or you don’t get along and the awkward silence is so uncomfortable that you can’t get any work done.
Your friends are also your neighbors.  This should be a good thing, and it’s great when you want to go to dinner or find something fun to do.  But when you’re in the middle of a ten page paper, there is nothing so terrible as hearing the dance party across the hall or smelling the brownies baking in the common room.
Netflix exists. This might just be me, but since I got here I’ve watched an insane amount of Netflix.  Comedies, dramas, the occasional foreign language film when I’m too tired to care about anything.  There’s a fine line, however, between taking a break from your work and realizing you’ve watched an entire season of How I Met Your Mother in three days.
There are cupcakes everywhere. Â Seriously, what is this about? Â I love cupcakes, but I spend way too much time eating them. Â And all that Baked and Wired eventually gets you (besides euphoric happiness) is a stepping stone towards the freshman fifteen.
You have to go to the gym all the time.  At this point, you’ve eaten so many cupcakes and spent so much time sitting around watching TV that you going to Yates is just another part of your schedule.  And since working out with your friends is actually really fun, it helps you forget the many tests you have to take the next day.
The internet is full of things that you definitely need.  Whether you’re buying an interview outfit from Modcloth, a Halloween costume from some sketchy online store, or a bunch of pretty and extremely useless things from Amazon, your money is probably disappearing as quickly as your motivation.
Distractions are everywhere, but we should all try to get a little more work  done and stop staying up until 3 every night.  But before you go, in honor of our new Jack the Bulldog, here is my favorite buzzfeed post of all time.