Well here is a struggle that any college student that moved away will come across at some point in there school career and that is staying in contact with loved ones and friends. When you go to school you promise everyone that you will stay in touch, that you will call everyday… or at least every week and that you will visit all the time. Well within the first week it becomes blatantly obvious that your goal to stay in touch is more of a fantasy than anything.

When it comes to family you really do make an effort, you call for quick conversations between classes, you try and text in between intense cram sessions, and you try and respond to emails in a reasonable time frame. Lets face it though, you forget to return phone calls because you avoid them for sometime because you know it will not take only five minutes like they promised, it will in fact take at least 20 minutes, and you don’t always have that kind of time between classes. So you tell yourself you will call them later, well later becomes tonight, then tomorrow, and then they are calling you in the middle of the day again restarting the entire cycle again. Honestly its just difficult, plus if you come from a big family like me its impossible to call your sisters, parents, and extended family back in one day and still have time to complete important things like homework and classes, and okay maybe I put my social life ahead of my calls and letters to sometimes. But still its really hard to stay in contact, and then you feel the intense guilt of avoidance when you don’t respond fast enough.

As for friends its a similar story line, but with a different set of actors. With friends, you all promised to stay in touch, to visit all the time, and to share everything that has happened to you everyday so that you don’t fall out of touch. But the first week you only call once and only have a few minutes, the next week you text a little and message on Facebook here and there, and by the third week you have completely transgressed into liking each others Facebook pictures and statuses and call it quits there at keeping in touch. The truth is that when you hit college you get a whole new group of friends, and same goes for you friend if they to left for college, or if they are still in high school than maybe they just get caught up in that old group of friends. Plus when you hit college you change, and the change can be pretty drastic and usually happens pretty quickly. You don’t always notice it right away but it happens and when you change, maybe the reasons for certain friendships don’t exist anymore, maybe you have come to the point where its time to move on and so you lose touch.

When you hit college everything changes, you change, your time and schedules change, and so you begin to lose touch slowly with friends and family. It becomes a struggle to keep up with them through the transition period. But you are not alone, we are going through the same thing and chances are your friends and family will understand if it takes you a while to get back, and if not then they will have to learn to deal with it because college is a busy time and you are trying your hardest with this balancing act. You will get there when you get there.

Hi my name is Mary Taylor, and I get distracted. In one day I can avoid homework for a solid 4-6 hours at a time by doing the normal distracting things like Facebook and Twitter, but I also get distracted by things like funny pictures of dinosaurs

catching up on the addicting show Greys Anatomy (currently on season 6 by the way)

or my favorite activity of all…

SLEEPING.

I can’t just sit down and work on homework anymore because there are to many distractions!!! And sometimes I can’t even escape my distractions because they tend to follow me. This includes things like a laptop, do you know how much you can do on a laptop!!!

And that is not even half of whats out there on the internet. Now to avoid these websites sometimes I will try to unplug and turn off the internet to encourage getting work done. Well that is when I switch to this program

and once you start playing Sims, there is no going back. Your night of focusing and getting stuff done is officially over and your focus on anything that doesn’t involve so and so getting pregnant or cheating on their spouse is gone.

Oh and I forgot to mention the worst distraction of all….

This website is the devil in disguise, sure it is helpful when you write a paper or research a project, but that’s only after you spend hours searching pictures for funny pictures of Harry Potter

or funny pictures for your major

In the end it takes me forever to get anything done, this is just a sampling of my level of distraction, it can get worse depending on the load. And the issue is that my level of distraction rises in parallel with the amount of homework I have to do. So the more homework I have left, the more time I will probably be spending on my computer avoiding the mounds of homework.

And since I live on Penn State campus there is more than just computers to distract me, there are football games, hockey games, hanging out with friends or going to concerts. Penn State campus in itself is a giant distraction. Sometimes I just walk around and that’s all I have to do to waste a good 2 hours. And one of my friends put a PS2 in my room, which means the distractions are piling up to match the laundry that I also avoid in the corner of my room.

And then there are essays for scholarships and bonus projects, clubs in abundance, projects for those clubs and classes, and so much more to do on campus, if you list it then Penn State probably has it there to distract you. Honestly if I didn’t take classes I probably still wouldn’t have time because there is that much to do on campus. So for the rest of my days I will try and fight distractions, combat them with work and patience for my work load. I know its just a dream to ever really be able to focus, but hey a girl can try.