Skinless

For my first year here at Penn State I was assigned to live in the second floor of Simmons Hall on the south side of campus. This exact floor and hall have been known for the many instances where women have reported being sexually assaulted at. Sexual assault is considered physical and mental attacks such as rape or attempted rape, and even seen as sexual contact or threats. Usually a sexual assault occurs when someone touches another person inappropriately without that person’s consent.

One night as i was heading out for work at around seven in the morning, I received an email notifying me that an assault had just occurred in the elevator I was entering and that it had happened an hour before the time the email was sent. While reading this email I froze, shaken up at the thought that women on this campus and at many other campuses and universities around the world have to endure this crime. Every day since I have been at Penn State I have grown scared to go through this experience. I find myself looking behind me every five seconds when i am alone and in the dark. If someone I don’t know gets too close to me I become quick to call someone I know for comfort and to inform them of my fear. I know men and women who carry around protection such as pocket knifes or pepper spray for situations like this. This is a fear that most people on this campus live with, not just me. It is a fear that should exist but we are forced to live with.

This goes beyond this campus, beyond Simmons Hall, beyond the second floor. The rape culture is present here and everywhere and it needs to be stopped.  Despite it being reported at Penn State thus far, men also fall victim to this crime. Men and women should be taught starting at a very young age that harming another human physically and mentally is wrong and that you should not do anything involving another human without their full consent. No one should live in fear. Minimizing the attacks of sexual assault until it is no longer existent will eliminate this fear forever, allowing the world as a whole to become a better place. One way to do this is to start right her, at our Penn State campus, minimizing these attacks by talking about it and speaking out on who shall be held responsible for these actions.

All Penn State students can agree that the first week of every semester is the easiest time academically. It’s a time to get to know all of your professors, get a feel of what the classes are going to be like, and have no worries. However, for me this second semester did not give me the same experience. I was bombarded with quizzes, tests, homework, and general assignments that made my sylly week not so enjoyable.

“Sylly Week” is the first week of every semester here at Penn State. Students have given this week this name since it is the week where most professors provides students with syllabus and provide the students with an insight on how the class will function for the semester before they start actually teaching. This term has a double meaning in which it not only signifies the syllabus being handed out but also the common emotion felt by the students and that is a state of silliness. Students take this time to enjoy themselves and go out before the workload begins. Some students do this everyday of the week while others just wait to go out on the weekend. Overall, everyone takes this week as the calm before the storm.

Not everyone I know had this experience. I watched most of my friends party with no car in the world everyday of the week. They did not hold back considering the fact that most of their professors didn’t introduce material since the add/drop period was not until the end of the week. I figured most professors would do this so that the new students to add the class at the end of the week would not miss out on the content being presented. Let’s just say most of my professors did not seem to care and carried on giving out knowledge from the very first moment I stepped into their classroom.

Despite my friends getting a week to party like animals, other kids were suffering like me to. I have come to notice that it all depends on the major the students are pursuing. Most students that suffered during sylly week are pursuing science,math, and engineering based majors. These majors require complex classes that makes it understandable why professors teaching these classes have no time to waste.

The truth about sylly week is that sometimes even the times that are supposed to be the easiest can be much more difficult. This varies from person to person. Regardless of how sylly week might have been for you, everything happens for a reason. Who knows maybe that first week of learning might be what helps you get that A.

Let´s talk about the last three weeks of the first semester here at Penn State. To most this is probably the most stressful time of the semester. Everyone is on edge filling their brains with as much information as they can before finals come. The amount of anxiety and tension in the air is truly depressing.

In these last three weeks, no one is really taking time to do anything but study. Sleep is even out of the equation. This rough patch can be very dangerous. People are not taking care of themselves physically and mentally because they are prioritizing work. This can lead to sleep deprivation and many other health issues that can only cause more harm in the long run. Picture it this way, if you study until you drop, how will you have enough energy to even make it to the test on finals week? You won´t.

This is why it is important to maintain a good amount of sleep per night and schedule time to eat. Some great strategies are having small snacks as you study or having lunch with a friend as you discuss material from a class. Sometimes having less structured conversations about a topic can expand your knowledge and allow you to remember concepts easier. This is because other people might bring up ideas of a topic that you haven´t though of before and they might also have scenarios that can be engraved in your memory longer.

On the other hand, the amount of pressure to succeed holds no space for time to be wasted on anything but academics. Despite knowing the risks, students will continue to have sleepless nights and skip meals because failure is not an option. The truth is the homestretch is a long weary journey that tests students to give their blood, sweat, and tears in order be well prepared to take exams that determine their futures. Just remember that future is non-existent if you cannot live to see it, so take care of yourself during this homestretch.

Here at State College, summer seemed to be nonexistent along with the fall. It seems like we have skipped straight into the tragic winter. I am from Philadelphia so i am used the Pennsylvania weather, however what is experienced here in the mountains is much different.

As a freshman, I wanted to prepare myself for this upcoming winter and i asked around to upperclassmen to see if the weather is in fact going to get worse than already is. All of them seem to agree that the worst weather comes in January and February with the wind nearly blowing them off their feet. They added that before coming to Penn State, they had not experienced a winter like it.

Since Penn State is a big party school as well I asked around what do you wear to go out in such freezing weather. Their response was simply that you don´t go out or make sure you wear a coat and hang it up when going in somewhere. Others quoted the famous rapper Cardi B and said “a hoe never gets cold” meaning that if you are brave enough wear what you want no matter the weather.

Furthermore, a large idea that has been brought up in the up rise of this weather is the need for someone to get warm with, in other words ¨a cuddle buddy¨. There seems to be a common need for someone to lay with in this weather. This could be because of the production of body heat among two people or because no one is going to be gong out during this weather and they do not want to be lonely.

I think with that being said, the truth is it is time to bring out the bubble coats, endless layers of hoodies, multiple pairs of shirts and pants, a couple of socks, the scarfs, the mittens, and even the ear muffs to protect us from the blizzard that´s coming for us.

 

I struggled writing this post because I lacked the motivation to do so. This is a common issue among us college students. Much of this motivation deprivation can be caused by one major concept, learned helplessness.

Learned helplessness is a tendency to fail to act to escape from a situation because of a history of repeated failures. Often college students see themselves failing continuously in college whether it is academically or socially. This continuous failure leads them to believe that all they can do is fail. This leaves their motivation to succeed lost in the dust.

Failure isn’t the only factor that causes this lack of motivation. Exhaustion has the same effect. After working on school for hours and hours, it gets pretty tiring. It seems that in college no matter how ahead you think you are, you’re still always behind. Therefore, the exhaustion is a cycle that never ends just like the workload.

Since we’re always exhausted, it’s hard to be motivated with little to no energy. This lack of motivation causes our productivity to increase. The less we want to do something, they lower the possibility of us actually doing it. Even if we do end up doing it, the quality of the content we produce is most times trash. A perfect example of this is this blog itself. In this blog, I feel like I am rambling, saying anything to meet the word count, and absolutely not enjoying one bit of it, hoping to be done so I can go back to sleep.

I have yet to figure out the solution of this college struggle. The truth is not being motivated sucks. The only thing I can think of is to push through until we can’t anymore and hope that it gets easier as time goes by.

College equals freedom. Or so they say. In college, students get to decide their schedule. Most of us take no more than 6 classes and in between those classes we have a lot of time in our hands. What we do with all of this time is the real issue.

It’s safe to say that college is a lot of work. Many students find themselves stuck on either continuing to work tirelessly through the night or stop for at least 5 minutes to even eat dinner. The workload can get so heavy that some students might even skip classes to get homework done.

On the other hand, some students don’t have much workload and rather spend their time going out to eat with friends, watching movies, and sleeping the day away. Even if these students do have a large workload, it seems like they wouldn’t care about failing but instead spending their time how they want to.

The common place between both of these type of students is how they manage their time. One of the most important aspects of college is knowing how to spend your time wisely and efficiently. The best way to do this is by incorporating both styles of students into your schedule. This can be done by assigning a certain amount of hours of work each day as well as hours to eat and chill. Most importantly schedule at east 8 hours of sleep because without sleep the likelihood of good performance in college decreases.

Having this time management can be very difficult to some students because they never learned how to plan out their use of time. However, it is impossible to go through college without exercising this skill. So, students are forced to either adapt to making time or end up with no degree or sleep deprivation.

With all of these factors coming to play in the life of a college student, it is extremely difficult to even fit one club in their schedule. This limits the involvement students have with their universities and with their peers. This can be degrading to their enthusiasm of being a part of college and gaining a full college experience.

Overall, the truth is yes, college students have a lot of time on their hands. But this time is not “freedom”. Most of a college students hours are completely occupied my work, eating, and minimal sleep, making our time more like imprisonment.

At Penn State, in-state students pay around 35,000 dollars a year while out of state students pay around 50,000. Did seeing those numbers have any impact on you? For most of us students, it did. That amount of money is an outstanding amount of money that most students cannot afford. I know for some of us the only things that made it possible for us to be here are scholarships, loans, and jobs. But why is college so expensive? And why do we choose to pay for it anyway?

The inflation of the cost of college is unbelievable. To some of the older graduates, this was not even a thought. For example, one of my coworkers at the famous “Off the Ground” and the South Redifer Commons told me that when she attended Penn State a few years back, she only had to pay 200 dollars a year. She stated that yes there was a difference in the value of this amount of money back then but it was nowhere near the amount us students have to pay now.

I often see college as a business more than anything. Colleges just want to make money while all we want is to further our education. They take advantage of this need and make us pay ridiculous amounts of money that mainly goes in their pockets than anywhere else. This why college is so expensive and our need for it is why we continue to break our banks to attend it.

On the other hand, to some students, money isn’t really much of a thought. Some students have families that are well off enough to provide college cost with ease. I can sometimes tell which students these are, especially when I see them roaming the streets in luxury cars and clothing.

Despite this, the ideology of college cost to most of us is that it’s way too much! That’s why some of us choose to go to smaller schools or community colleges that are more pocket friendly. Others such as myself choose to attend schools such as Penn State because we feel like that attending a big school is the only way we will really succeed in the real world and deal with the extreme amount of debt later on.

Work hard, play even harder. That is the Penn State lifestyle. I shouldn’t even have to say anything further for my fellow classmates to understand where i’m coming from but for you Penn State foreigners, let me explain.

Penn State students are some of the most balanced individuals to ever exist. They literally are extremely focused and studious on the weekdays but when the weekend comes, it is a complete turnover. Penn State students party hard! I mean non-stop, from when the moon comes out until the crack of dawn. This partying however does not stop these students from waking up the next monday morning ready to tackle the heavy work-load ahead of them and the days following.

Penn State students have a sense of liveliness to them that is impeccable. These students will bring joy to any event. A perfect example of this is THON which is an event where students dance for hours in order to raise money for sick children. The sense of doing great things and making a difference while enjoying every second is the epitome of what a Penn State student stands for.

There are some outliers that do not hold this balance. Some of us just can’t stop partying. These people are who confuse me and if you are one of these people please let me know, how do you do it? Penn State can academically be very challenging, which is why i find it hard to believe that students can party all day and still pass there classes.

Another type of outlier is the group of students who are extreme home bodies. These students will lose all sense of belonging in this school because all they’re focused on is the perfect grades that limit their enjoyable college experience. My question for these students is also, how do you do it? School can only be so fun for so long. Go out and live a little.

Not having the balance in this school can really make or break you. If you party too hard, you don’t pass. If you party too little, then you have no sense of involvement and social life. The truth is, the only possible way to make it here at Penn State is to find your balance.

Before college life was not easy. It must’ve been full of senior projects and a load of work to simply graduate high school and actually get to college. Now that life in college has come to be, life didn’t get any easier. It might’ve just got harder. Yes i know, WE ARE independent! We live by ourselves, we do what we want, when we want. Everything we’ve ever wanted right? Wrong. There is a whole new level of responsibility that comes with college. So much so that it affects our psyche.

College introduces new emotions that may not have appeared in ones life before or that may have not appeared to this extreme. As a college student we now face emotions of sadness from being homesick, anxiety from having too much to handle, and even anger that we’re failing at this college life. See most of us freshmen are so used to having life handed to us. Food provided by our guardians, a free roof over our heads, and millions of resources that made life a walk in the park. However, it seems like overnight that comfortable lifestyle was ripped off like a band-aid and all that’s left underneath is reality.

One of the main causes of these moods is money. See money is the source of all evil and it seems like since we don’t need no parts of hell, we have no money. Having no money in college can take you from the miracle of seeing the sun in State College to instantly seeing a thunderstorm coming for your head. Do you want to eat? Do you want to sleep somewhere that’s not the street? Do you want to further your education? Then open up your pockets and pull out that money that you don’t have.

Another big cause for these negative emotions is stress. College provides a big work load that task up most of your time. Sometimes this load is so much that your stuck feeling overwhelmed with no way to escape your emotions. Not being able to successfully accomplish this workload can cause many of us to see ourselves as failure, and ultimately digging ourselves in a hole of self-pity that does nothing but destruct our mental health.

In conclusion, all forms of evil moods stem from college, so college must be the devil coming for our happiness. But, the truth is we have to put on our happy face in front of our peers and pull through. We have to believe that eventually it will be better and that at the end of the road, this college thing will be worth it. Hopefully with a good career gained from attending college, we will even get some of that money back, even if these college loans won’t make it easy. As for those moods, the only thing left to do is surround ourselves with the greater things about college. The happy environment that could distract those negative moods from finding their way to our minds.

In the early years of adulthood, children are forced to face a grand decision that could make or break the entire future ahead of them. This decision being the attendance of more education than they have faced in their previous years, yet this education would actually be focused on what they really want to do… yes you guessed it, it’s college. This simple decision to attend college leaves students as a sea of inquirers who question if every move they make in their transition to college is the right one. Many times, it’s not. On this big move to college, students are officially left to face the world on their own with little guidance from guardians. All they have been prepared for is put to the test. They soon realize that life is much harder than they once thought.

One of the first layers of skin they have to rip off during their first few weeks is the fear of isolation and loneliness. Now that they’re left to wander for themselves, students can get lost within themselves. Here at Penn State in which there are over 46,000 students, one would they think there are plenty of “friend fish” in the sea to get the ball rolling in terms of being comfortable with the new college life. However, this is not always the case. Even with so many students surrounding the streets, newcomers still feel isolated due to their struggles in becoming accustom to an environment they aren’t familiar with. Penn State can be described as a suburban country-style town, instead of other areas students may have lived in before such as large urban cities. Due to this big change in environment, the idea of having to change the way one lives can be far too overwhelming, causing students to hide out in their rooms where they feel most comfortable.

Not only is a change of environment enough to cause students to turn to isolation as an escape, a change in lifestyles for most students in the sense of responsibility, sharing, etc. can also cause this. In college, students are hit with a massive explosion of responsibility that they might not have been required to face before their move. When living in dorms and going to classes, students have to share a room with a stranger or make sure they stay on top of their assignments whereas before they might’ve had their own room or might’ve had teachers remind them when a homework is due. This change of lifestyle can be so overpowering that students can become obsessed with overcoming these new challenges  to the extent that they isolate themselves from the rest of the world in order to obtain that goal.

The untold truth about college is that it’s not all it’s hyped to be. No it’s not all fun and games, and no it’s not all going to be the best four years of your life. College is hard and every step of the way is gonna be even harder.