By Maddy Lockwood, Assistant Feautures Editor
Why didn’t anyone tell me how hard being an adult is? Well, I’m not going to lie, I think someone (or many people) did. But for some odd reason, I thought that it wouldn’t apply to me. I would like to add that I consider myself to be one of the most organized people I know, so going into this semester, I was not even considering that I would simply run out of time to do things, but we’ll get into that later. I never understood how hard making plans, appointments, meetings and deadlines was until I was forced to do it — and then make sure I fulfilled them all. Unfortunately, I was (and still am) completely responsible for myself for the first time, and it sucks.
To give you a point of reference and prove my credentials as a chronically overscheduled college student with the inability to say “no,” I am on three executive boards, one executive council, am currently earning 18 credits, and work two jobs at Canisius in addition to my mandatory field placements for my major where I observe and assist classes in the Buffalo Public Schools. This is where I put my disclaimer: I love that I am this busy, I thrive on strict scheduling, I am not complaining and I wouldn’t do all of it unless I completely wanted to.
The hardest things I have had to work through this year were some of the dumbest things I could not have planned for, and unfortunately, it put me through the wringer. There were just some things that I couldn’t prepare for or put into my calendar and it was something I had to learn how to deal with. Honestly, a lot of the things that fall into this category are things that I normally would have relied on my parents to do for me — taking myself to doctors and dentist appointments and then making decisions on my own health, refilling (and paying for) prescriptions, getting my car inspected (and then living without a car because it didn’t pass inspection) and the list continues. While these tasks may not seem like they would ruin your day, I am going to point out that I have to schedule my naps and give myself strict bedtimes because my roommates so lovingly describes me as “really cranky” when I don’t sleep at least seven hours.
Unfortunately, when things that I do not expect come up, I tend to send myself into a stress bubble where I cannot relax again until I find myself back on track, usually to the detriment of the things I actually enjoy or that my mental health would benefit from, but hey, checking things off my to-do list is fun and stress relieving, right? At this point in my “adulting career” I have at least come to peace with the fact that I can’t control everything, and I think that is progress!
I suppose the point of this rambling is that being an adult is hard, so hard, and I don’t know why I thought it wouldn’t hit me as hard as it did, but the moral of the story is that it gets better. It will take what seems like forever to get better, but it will. And no matter how many spreadsheets, calendars and to-do lists I create and finish there will always be things that I cannot plan for or predict – and that’s okay.