As many of you might know, I started college this year! I knew college would be vastly different from high school, and one of my greatest worries was that I wouldn’t be able to continue book blogging after school had started.

And while it’s been difficult, working on this blog is one of the few things that helps me when I get overwhelmed.

Being partway into my second semester, I’ve had a lot to think about when it comes to book blogging and college. Last year while I was still in high school, I ended up having to put this blog on a short hiatus in my very last semester because I was just expected to be handling so many things. I was able to get this blog back up during the summer, since I was still working my part time job. However, college is vastly different than high school, and in my second semester, I’ve had a lot to think about when it comes to these two sides of my life mixing.

One of my biggest worries is that my school work will be so overwhelming that I’ll have to put this blog on hiatus again. I already had to do it last semester, and it felt like my life was missing something. This semester, I tried scheduling in advance over break, but I found that I could only schedule a few weeks in advance before the posts would become outdated. A lot of my work depends on what I’m currently reading or what I’m currently planning to do, like in my wrap-ups, so I can’t exactly preschedule those posts like I do with a number of other posts. I can thankfully schedule my reviews ahead of time, and the way my scheduling has worked out is that a book I’m reading now won’t be reviewed for at least a month. I’m lucky with this, because it gives me time to actually sit down at write the review, and I don’t have to rush it. If I hadn’t given myself that headstart during break, this blog would be missing a lot of reviews.

If you saw my contribution to CW’s The Pond Gets Loud feature, you’ll know that I put anywhere from 10 to 20 or more hours into this blog a week. As a college student, that’s not exactly manageable, because many of my classes expect me to put in loads of work outside of class to stay caught up. Just this week that I’m currently writing this post, I have three essays due, as well as regular math homework (which is a subject I struggle with, and so the page and a half my professor assigns us usually takes an hour or more). Last semester, I even had a job at the university library, but I quit when it became prohibiting to my schoolwork–I was often staying up late working on homework, barely getting sleep, and the 2 am Monday night shift that I had certainly didn’t help. In all of this, blog work was often pushed to the weekends, where I would stay up late after dealing with homework to make sure I had one or two blog posts for the week. A lot of the times, I would write posts the day of or the day before they were supposed to be posted. And I couldn’t maintain that for long.

This semester has been slightly different than last, with more essays, more challenging classes, but with less…overall time used. It’s weird, because I’ll find myself struggling to finish an essay on time, but then I’ll find that I’ll still have time to write a review here, or a recommendations post there. I don’t work a job anymore, but I have been applying to a lot of scholarships and jobs for next year. Either way, this semester has been different, and I can only hope it’s because I’m better managing my time. 

I find it important that I continue writing this blog, mainly because it helps me calm down enormously. It adds stress, yea, but I’ve been doing this for so long that not doing it is weird and I can’t imagine not doing it. The few times I had to drop it honestly made my time worse, because I felt like I didn’t belong in the community and that I was just constantly buried under schoolwork. Writing this blog makes me feel like I belong somewhere and the posts give me the feeling that I’m not always crushed under homework–I still have time for what I love and what I care about. 

I realize this post was text heavy, but writing this out really helped. I completely understand why some people have had to drop their blog while in college, as this is overwhelming. But I can only hope that in upcoming semesters it doesn’t’ have to come to that.

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