We had a meeting with all of the Buckeye Bloggers last week. We talked about personalizing our blogs, showing what it is really, sincerely like to be a student here.

I’m at a point where I am truly experiencing the harsh reality of being a student. It’s a love/hate relationship.

In my favorite class, Women’s Health on a Global Perspective, Dr. Piperata is an excellent professor and the material is more intellectually stimulating than any I’ve encountered here.
But it is nearly impossible to keep up with the 6+ hours of reading a night and do anything else. Then, we get to class and have discussions, where we are judged by the intelligence of our comments. It is wonderful, but horrible. We are, in fact, a group of girls, and we judge harshly. It surfaces the same low self-esteem within ourselves that we are discussing in women all around the world. Ironic.

I love my American Presidency class, but I am not a Political Science major, and I find myself working harder than many to keep up, because I lack the knowledge they already have gained in their endless list of Political Science classes. I know that this is the way it goes sometimes, and I will be better off for it, but it is an incredibly frustrating battle just to follow the class discussion.

I have the greatest job in the world as an RA, but it can be a lonely one, because it is hard to define a friendship between a resident and an “authority figure�.
I am incredibly lucky to have an internship, but thinking about how much more studying and sleeping I could do in simply the transportation time alone, it is overwhelming.

And all of this makes it nearly if not completely impossible to have fun, get sleep, get more involved, workout, meet new people, do something for myself…all those things also essential to college life.

So this is my reality. I have no idea if it will get any better than this. So what keeps me going? What fluffy and perhaps perceived as insincere thought will I end this list of sincere complaints with?

What keeps me going is whatever I can get, whatever positive encouragement I can grab on to that will last me a few days.

This week it came in the form of a complete stranger. I received a scholarship from the School of Communication, and there was a ceremony today.

Rick Milenthal, a well-known entrepreneur of Columbus, received the Distinguished Alumni Award. His speech seemed to hit the nail on the head for right now.

First of all, he showed that it is possible to be a Communications major and be incredibly successful. But then he told us to surround ourselves with smart people and learn from each other. He told us that success in our personal life was essential for success in our professional life, and how important it is to find good mentors and take steps to success. This is enough food for thought to keep me going until the next wave of encouragement.

And this, sincerely, it what it is to be a student, and why I know that each sacrifice I make is worth it, and what makes the love prevail in the love/hate relationships.