Journaling: The Number One Stress in College.

If there’s anything I wish I could improve in college, it would be having more time to do things. With classes every two hours on Monday-Wednesday-Friday, and then Marching Band, things get a little stacked up. I still go on bike rides in the evening, I keep up on my Facebook, Twitter, and Google+; and then I’ve still got some sort of reading/homework to do. I’m also someone who journals everyday, (a diary for those of you who call it that) and that usually takes place right before I go to bed. So consequently, if everything else I’m doing pushes my bedtime really late, like 1:00 or 2:00, then I sometimes put off journaling the days’ events since I’m already pretty tired.

Honestly, and interestingly enough, out of everything that can stress me out in college, putting off journaling has to be the Number One stress creator for me. Journaling everyday has been something I’ve done since August 2007, with the exception of a few long summer trips, a day or two every 6 months, etc. So basically I’m holding myself to the tradition of recording everything that happens in my life. Of course, I didn’t have even close to this amount of stuff going on in my life when I started journaling at 14. No social networking besides YouTube, it was my rookie year in High School marching band, I only had 2 or 3 core friends, and no one else. (Oh, and of course, Hockey Night in Canada every Saturday night) As I’ve gotten busier and busier, I’ve still somehow held onto this journaling thing for 4 great years.

The problem is obvious; my brain can only hold so much detailed information. If I hold off journaling for another day, I’ve not only got that day to write about still, but I just went through a whole other day, that I also need to process in my mind & write about. If this cycle continues – and recently it’s been happening a lot – I end up reaching the point where I’m at overload and have to cough up everything from the past week, as best as I can remember. It’s the biggest pain, trying to describe a day that was 5 or 6 days past, and needing to take about 5 times as long to write it down, compared to if you had just done it on that night. Not only that, but getting behind makes me feel like I’m missing out on the “present” of my life, since my mind’s desperately trying to hold on to the memories of the past couple of days.

Then I have a day where I’m in catch-up mode, spending much of my free time in the afternoon/evening getting back up to pace, journaling the last couple of days as best as I can remember. It’s also a setback from the writer’s perspective; when you journal on time, you might be able to write about a page or two for that specific day. If you get behind, and try to catch-up a few days later, you’re getting about half the length in your journal entries than you would’ve originally gotten. An epic 5 page day would now be about 2 pages.

So, funny story for everyone out there, getting behind on journaling is the absolute reason why I get stressed in college. Then finishing homework, grades, and stuff like that follows, ONLY when I’m behind on my journal entries. It’s an interesting cycle to say the least.

Back in 9^th grade, our school had a presentation about Rachel Scott, who was killed in Columbine HS in 1999. It was Rachel’s Challenge, which had a few key points to it, but one of them to accept the challenge was to keep a journal. I had tried to journal before and never got into it very much, but the statistic they then threw at me got me very intrigued. They showed something on the projector, it said that 97% of the people that kept a journal in college would graduate. And sitting there, 13 years old in my junior high school, I found this stat to be ground-breaking. I don’t think I’ve ever gone through with all of Rachel’s Challenge, but the journaling part? YES. For the next 8 months or so after the presentation, my drive to journal consistently went off course, until my best friend showed me his journals one time. He had been writing in one on-and-off since he was SEVEN!  We read through it and watched his writing, his humor, his friends, and life in general progress. I was completely re-inspired by that night, and motivated enough to start over. August 8^th, 2007 was the start of my journaling life, and since then it has stayed put as a staple of my evening routine. What abuse I’ve given such a tradition lately! How can I let myself lose it?

In writing this blog entry, I realized that I can’t do without it. I mean come on, I’ve got to be part of that 97 percent!!! I’ve gotta get my mind on the present & near future, I mean hey, this Saturday the marching band’s heading down to East Lansing, for the CMU-Michigan State game! FIRE UP CHIPS!!!!!