You finished your last exam early and, after waiting for someone else to turn theirs in (you don’t want to be first!), ran down the steps of that lecture hall, slammed that baby on the desk and skipped your way to freedom. As you walk home you notice how great the air smells, how bright the sun is and how beautiful your campus is. School is out and you are feelin’ groovy.

After regaling your roommates with tales from your 90-minute essay exam (“I totally rocked that shiz!”), you head to your room to start the end-of-the-year cleaning session, beer in hand. You grab a garbage bag, sit down at your desk and start sifting through the piles of papers, books and notebooks that litter your desk.

In the back of your mind, you know that some of those notebooks will come in handy for next year’s classes. In the front of your mind, though, you know you will never look at them ever again. So, in a celebratory fashion, you toss one binder after another into the Hefty.

“Bye bye, Econ! See ya never, Psych 240!” The feeling is euphoric. All those syllibi, gone. All those Power Point slides, gone. Those damn course packs, gone. All those near-empty highlighters, gone.

Before you know it, you are left with nothing but a stack of books.

You gather the books, throw them into your backpack and head to the bookstore to sell them back. On your way, you start planning what you will do with all that extra money. A keg for the big end-of-the-year bash? A new bag?  The possibilities are endless. Even though you know the bookstores totally screw you with the buy-back, you have, like, 12 books this time! Giant, expensive textbooks and lots of novels. You’re sure there is some serious cash flow coming your way.

The bag is heavy and by the time you make it to the bookstore you are sweating. Naturally, the line is super long and filled with other students hoping to make it rain. You stand there, cocked to the side from that overflowing bag of books, and watch student after student happily free themselves of the semester. Only the looks on their faces as they leave isn’t one of big money – it is anger.

When it is finally your turn, you unload your books onto the counter. The cashier scans them one at a time, forming two piles.

“We can’t use these,” he says, pointing to the larger stack. “They’re going with the new edition next year.” He offers to let you take them home (so nice of him), or he can donate them to whatever organization it is that wants your used copy of Tom Jones. You consider taking them – you aren’t going to give those away for free! – but then you realize that you’d have to carry those all back home, not to mention pack them up and move them.

“Ugh. Just keep them,” you say.

You don’t think things can get any worse and then he hands you your money. A whole $26. For 5 books. That wasn’t even a quarter of the cost of one! You rip that money out of his hands and storm out of the store.

——

Yeah, we’ve all been there. Maybe if you combine your money with all of your friends, you’d have enough for that keg.

You wake up for class and something is different. It takes you a moment before you realize that – OH MY GOD! – there is sunlight coming into your room! It’s not dark or dreary out!

You pull back the shades (or sheet you’re using as a shade) and let the light in. Your mood is instantly lifted.

You skip to the bathroom to take a shower and hum a little tune to yourself as you lather up. While you blow-dry your hair (no ponytail today!) you plan out your first-day-of-Spring outfit: new bright cardigan, new jeans and – YIPEEEEE – flip flops! You are so excited for the day ahead that you even swipe on a little bronzer.

Before you head out the door you toss a magazine into your bag. You have an hour to kill between classes and instead of running home and sitting by the heater, you will grab an iced coffee and sit outside people watching (read: secretly hoping that guy you heart will walk by) and catching up on the latest celeb drama.

And now you are ready.

You put on your oversized sunglasses, slip your tootsies into your favorite pair of Havaianas and head off into the bright spring day jamming out to your favorite happy songs on your iPod. (What? You’ve always wanted to live your life to the beat of a song.)

A cool breeze hits you as you open the door. “It’s early,” you think to yourself. “It will warm up.” Only it gets worse as you walk to class. Soon your toes are numb, your leg hair has completely grown back, and your hands are so cold you can barely wrap that light spring cardigan tighter around your body.

You scold yourself for opting out of the spring scarf trend.

You hold out hope that the day will get warmer; you are determined to have spring and will not let a few unseasonable snotsicles deter you. It is late March, dammit! It should be warm! If only that hope could warm you up.

When you finally make it to class, you run to the bathroom to blow your nose, stubbing the big toe you can no longer feel on the door. You curse Mother Nature for toying with your emotions and yourself for being dumb enough not to actually check the weather.

And that is when you realize that you are not alone; the bathroom is filled with other Spring-loving girls like yourself, wearing their brightest corals and showing off their freshly pedicured toes as they too run their hands under warm water.

—

Yeah, we’ve all been there. But look on the bright side: at least you aren’t one of the really dumb girls laying out on the quad in a bikini!

You’re at a house party or a bar… or in line to get into a house party or bar. It doesn’t matter. Wherever you are, you’ve just spotted a very handsome boy and you want to talk to him. You turn to your friends and point him out.

“OMG, girl, he IS hot. Go to him,” they say. Then you spend the next 5 minutes debating the best conversation starter/reapplying lip gloss/yanking your shirt down a wee bit lower to show off the girls. When everything is in order (“Do I have anything in my teeth??” you ask your friends as you flash a big, toothy smile), you move in.

Due to some extreme Power Houring before leaving the house, your friends are feeling rather rambunctious. As you make your way to get a drink, they shove you into the boy. Not part of the carefully laid out plan, but that move has been known to work wonders in the past.

You grab the boy’s arm (which feels nice and muscley through that button-down shirt of his) and apologize for your friends. He smiles at you. [Swoon.] You offer to buy him a drink to replace the one that spilled when you fell into him. He offers to buy you one instead.

It’s already working.

While waiting at the bar for a bartender (any bartender) to look your way, you start chatting with the boy. You get his name (which you may or may not forget .25 seconds later), his major, his hometown….the usual. Then you start chatting about more important things, like why Vodka and Soda is better than Jack and Coke any day.

As time passes, you start getting a bit closer. First, he rests his arm next to yours on the bar as you sip your drink. Then he puts it around you as someone passes by. When you walk away from the bar, he puts his hand on the small of your back and leads you. When you bump into his friends and start talkin’, he puts his arm around your shoulder (and you put your hand on the small of his back). Then he starts rubbing your back….

Then his tongue is down your throat and he’s nibbling on your ear in the back corner by the bathroom. And you are getting goose bumps/weak in the knees.

You silently celebrate your success as you debate what to do with the full drink in your hand. You pull away for a second, put that sucker down and start running your hands through the boy’s hair.

While making out in public is completely socially acceptable in college watering holes, knowing your friends (and the rest of the bar) are watching from the corner skeeves you out. You ask the boy if he wants to go. You both pound your drinks, you not-so-seductively wipe the inevitable drips off your face with the back of your hand, then he grabs your hand and you head back to his place… where you wake up 6 hours later under a dirty sheet listening to him snore.

—

Yeah, we’ve all been there. If we were smart, we stuck around for a morning romp. If we were lucky, we got a ride home. If not, we stuck our bra in our purse, wiped the mascara from our cheek and did the run/walk home as we attempted to avoid snickers from strangers on their way to class.

What a bitch. Seriously, the next time you see her you are going to open a major can of whoop ass and tell her everything that is on your mind: she’s a crappy friend, you can’t trust her, and those jeans you told her you liked? Yeah, they make her look FAT!

You sit in your room waiting for her to come home, stewing. Each passing minute brings out more and more anger, and you think of more things you can’t wait to say to her. You have never been this angry. You are afraid she is going to cry. You have been waiting to say these things for a long time and there is no telling how it is all going to go down.

You hear her come home. She drops her things and comes and finds you in your room.

“Hey!” She says, in that annoyingly chipper tone.

“Hey,” you reply.

“What’s up?”

“Nothin’, just studying. How was your day?” So, you chicken out. She just looks so normal and happy and you don’t know how to verbally bitch slap someone to her face. You know she doesn’t mean to be a bad friend, and you feel bad unleashing all that anger on her. And having to watch her reaction.

She starts talking about your other friends and the things they are saying about you, and you begin getting angry again. How could you not confront her?! But you can’t. Not to her face. She eventually makes her way back to her own room and signs online.

You see her name pop up on your Facebook chat list and that is when you let it all out.

“You know how I said I was fine? Well I’m not fine! You are a crappy friend….”

Sure, she was just in your room. Yeah, she can hear you tapping your foot through the wall. Ok, so you couldn’t say this stuff to her face; it is just so much easier online! Why have to tell her something to her face when you can hide behind your MacBook and not have to see her reactions? There is nothing wrong with doing it this way, is there? You will get it all out and then have the make up hug in person; it’s basically the same thing.

Actually, it’s better. You are getting it all off your chest and this way you have time to think about what you want to say and feel so much more comfortable saying it online. You’re protected and safe making you much less likely to pussy out of saying what’s really on your mind, and you can do it all with sad/angry music playing in the background to set the mood. (Try doing that while talking to someone face to face.) Plus, there are emoticons, which are basically like talking to someone in person. Right? Right. Anyways, you do everything else online (like shopping, researching and telling boys you like them), so why not this?

Eventually, fingers cramped and armpits sweaty, you say what you need to say. She says what she needs to say. You both throw a few “XOXO smiley face” IMs in there and it’s over. You both get up from your computers, meet in the kitchen for a snack and carry on as if nothing ever happened.

—

Don’t worry; you’re not alone. In fact, I’ve got the Kings of Leon blaring as I’m having an online fight with my BFF right this second. In 2011, I feel it’s the only way to go.

Your hair is done, your makeup is on and your outfit is perfect. All you have to do is pack that wristlet and you’re ready to head out with your friends. Money? Check. ID? Check. Camera? Check.

Before you leave, you mix a few drinks and have a mini-dance party with the girls. Two rum and Diets and a few old school Britney songs later, it’s time to head out. But not without a “SELFIE!!”

You gather the girls around, make your sexy face, stick that arm out and capture the moment.

“Let me see!” your friends shriek.
“Ew. I have a double chin. One more!” So you take one more.
“Cuuuute!” everyone agrees. You put the camera back in your bag and head off to the bars.

Once there, you whip that camera out, strap it to your wrist and settle in for a night of partying. You beeline to the bar and order a round of shots. You snap a picture of them sitting on the bar, then you snap another of you and your friends cheers-ing. Then you ask the random dude standing next to you to get a picture of you taking them.

You chase the shot with a round of vodka sodas. Before you take the first sip, you ask a girl standing nearby to take a picture of you guys holding your drinks. Then, remembering how good you look, you ask your friend to get a shot of you and your drink alone.

“FACEBOOK!” you scream.

Suddenly, you hear Kelly Clarkson blaring from the DJ booth. You make your way to the dance floor, camera swinging from your wrist, to shake your rump. You do a little dance, pause, and take a picture of your friend getting humped from behind by a total shadester. Then you gather the girls together for a selfie.

“Want me to take that for you?” a nice gentleman asks.

“Nah, I love me some selfies.” You stick your arm out (and your chin up – you don’t want any double-chin action) and take the pic. Realizing you left the camera on zoom and only captured your teeth and your friend’s hair, you do it again.

“CUTE!” you all shriek.

“Ok, now let’s do ‘you just found out your boyfriend is gay’,” one friend proposes. You huddle up, stick the camera out and take the pic. Then you pass it around for everyone to admire.

“Ok, how about ‘who farted?’” another friend recommends. So you do it again. And again. And again. There is “sexy,” and “drunk,” and “your drink is empty.”

When you go to the bathroom, you snap some pictures (“SELFIE IN THE STALL!”). When you stop for pizza on the way home you snap some pictures (“SELFIE WITH A SLICE!”). When you get home and your feet are totally blistery from those heels, you snap some pictures (“Ew, our feet are gross!”).

And when you wake up in the morning, you grab your camera and flip through the ridiculousness that was last night. By the time you make it out of bed, you have 5 emails from friends begging you to post those puppies on Facebook.

Yup – been there. I don’t know what it is, but – much like a guy in a hot pair of jeans -  there is something about the alcohol/selfie combo that is just impossible to resist.

For the rest of the evening, you and cutie partner boy tell the tales of an awesome game…while rubbing each other’s backs and making flirty/inappropriate comments between beers. Before you know it, you’re outside on the driveway eating his face like he’s a giant slice of late night pizza. (Mmm, pizza.)

“Wanna go somewhere?” He asks.

“Obvi,” you answer as he’s grabbing your hand and leading you back to his place. You stumble down the street, making out at every stop sign and red light you encounter.  Soon you are back at his dorm which, thankfully, is a single. Also a single? His bed.

As you are setting your stuff on the floor, he grabs you and you make your way to the bed. There’s kissing, groping and a nearly unsuccessful go at your bra hooks. Things are going fine (great, even) until he attempts to get on top of you. You roll on your back when – SMACK – you hit the wall. You try to shimmy to your right a little bit but there’s nowhere to go. If you move another inch you’ll send him flying onto the floor.

“Ok, you go left and I’ll go right,” you explain. It takes a few tries (which look like something out of Circ-De-Soleil), but it finally works. He’s on top. You decide to stick in this formation for awhile to keep things simple, but as things heat up you forget about the spatial issues. Mid-passionate kiss, the boy makes it clear that he wants to switch things up a bit and before you know it, you’re grasping on his bicep so as not to fall out of the bed.

The boy pulls you back up, you laugh, and then things resume. Eventually (too soon, in your opinion), the lust-sesh is over and you doze off. He’s spooning you, which would be cute if your face wasn’t pressed into the wall. Or if your arm weren’t totally asleep with no opportunity of moving to wake it up a bit. You stir a bit, hoping to wake the boy up so you can both roll onto your backs, but he doesn’t budge. Not that there would be room for that anyway. You contemplate an escape plan.

There is no way you’re getting up and going home. But rolling over – thus becoming the big spoon – isn’t an option either. That would just be weird. But you have to do something; your arm is starting to tingle and you’re pretty sure your mouth is thisclose to what is surely lead paint on the walls.

When the boy lets out a loud snore, though, you realize you are stuck between a rock (hard body) and a hard (lead) place. So you close your eyes and wait for the booze to kick in and knock you out. If your arm can fall asleep, why can’t you?

—
Yeah, we’ve all been there. That is why we’re officially sticking to older men – they’ve got the big beds.

Want more typical tales of a college coed? Get ‘em right here, right now.

We’re well into another new school year and to honor that, we at CollegeCandy are bringing back the fan-favorite series, “We’ve All Been There.”  (We tried to get another national holiday/long weekend for you guys but it’s way harder than we thought so this will have to do.) Every week, Lauren – University of Michigan will comment on the common experiences all college women share – like procrastinating or using the not-so-private bathrooms. Read, relate, cringe and enjoy.

It might be your roommate’s birthday, or your birthday, or just another Saturday night on campus. Either way, you are currently standing in front of your over-stuffed closet in a towel with wet hair dripping down your back. You’ve got your pre-party mix blasting from your laptop as you scan your closet for something to wear.

To the left is a pile of jeans. 13 pairs of jeans to be exact. Dark wash, light wash, skinnies, trousers, wide leg, bootcut. To the right hangs your shirts: long sleeve, short sleeve, camis, halters, all in every shade of the rainbow.

You put on some underwear and your sexy black going-out bra, pull out a pair of jeans and squeeze/lunge your booty into them. “No late night pizza,” you think to yourself as you suck in your belly to button them.

You pull a low-cut black shirt from the closet and put it on. You check yourself in the mirror. No good.

You grab a different shirt. Nope.

You pull a blue cami off the hanger and put it on. The bra doesn’t work with it, so you slip out of the cami, swap on a strapless bra and put it back on.  Now the jeans don’t work, so you kick them off and grab a lighter pair from the stack.

Blah. You hate the outfit. Maybe a dress will work.

You grab your new green dress from the closet and slip it on. You can see your underwear lines so you take them off and grab a thong. You like your reflection in the mirror – your boobs look good, the dress hides your post-midterms poundage and the color makes you look less pasty.

Only – crap – you don’t have any weather appropriate shoes to wear. At least not a pair that won’t kill your feet in an hour.

You take the dress off and throw it on the floor. “Leggings will work,” you think to yourself. You pull on a pair of black leggings and realize they are the ones with the whole in the butt. You kick them off and grab another pair. You rifle through your drawers throwing shirts on the floor as you attempt to find something long enough to pair with the pants.

Finally, standing in your room in a bra and a pair of leggings with all of your clothes piled around you on the floor you declare, “I have nothing to wear!” You pout, you throw things and you tell your roommates you aren’t going anywhere.

They come to your room – facing the same dilemma in their own closets – and sift through the wreckage.  Eventually, they will grab a few of your things to pair with their own jeans. “OMG, that looks so hot! That didn’t look that good on me!” You scream.

They bring you down a few tops of their own and you try them on. “That looks so good on you!” they exclaim. And soon everyone is dressed and happy. And an hour late for whatever it was you were getting dressed for in the first place.

—-

Yeah, we’ve all been in a full closet with nothing to wear. Isn’t that what having roommates is all about?

After finishing another long day of classes (a whole 3 hours!), you head home to grab a quick snack and go to the gym. You don’t even let yourself sit down or get comfortable, knowing that getting near that couch – even for a moment – means you would never get up again. You have a ton of reading to do, but you must squeeze in that daily workout.

You throw on a pair of workout pants, squeeze into a sports bra, grab your iPod and a bottle of water and make your way to the gym.

You play your cardio mix as you walk, pumping you up for the big workout ahead. It’s gonna be a long run, or maybe 45 minutes on the elliptical.

When you get to the gym you realize that you weren’t the only one with this plan today. The gym is packed. You make your way to the cardio room and notice a short line has already formed for both the treadmills and the ellipticals.

So you wait.

As you stand there, losing any motivation you may have had for a long, sweaty workout, you look over at the machines to see if anyone is close to finishing. That is when you spot her.

She’s wearing crisp, tight yoga pants and a sports bra. Not under a shirt, but as a shirt. Her hair is perfectly straight and her face is made up for a night at the bars. And she is on the phone. Her feet are barely moving – god forbid she should break a sweat and ruin her eyeliner – as she discusses her evening plans (quite loudly) with whomever is on the other end of the call.

15 minutes go by. The rest of the girls on the ellipticals are still working hard – sweating, breathing heavy, staring at Cell Phone girl. And she continues chatting.

You sigh loudly and obviously, shifting your weight from side to side. Maybe, you think to yourself, this girl doesn’t realize people are waiting to get a real workout.  She looks at you.  And keeps on talking.

All of that energy you had stored up for your workout is surging through you. You want to walk over and ask her nicely (“Bitch, can you get off that machine so someone who wants to actually USE it can get on?!) to get off the machine, but you don’t. Instead, you stand there and stew.

Another 5 minutes go by and, finally, she hangs up the call and stops pedaling. “Thank god,” you think to yourself.  You start walking towards her elliptical when you realize that someone else is already there. And has struck up a conversation with her. She stands on the elliptical – not moving – and chats it up with her muscley friend.

Another elliptical opens up and you finally get your workout started. It is another 20 minutes before Ms. Thang gets up and leaves the gym, not a bead of sweat dripping from her flawless face.

She walks by your machine on the way out. “Yeah, I’m leaving the gym,” she says into her Crackberry. “I’m so tired from my workout!”

Fuming, you pedal faster.

We’ve all been there. And we’ve wanted to throw some hand weights at her too.

Just another day heading to class...

While every college girl shares many of the same college experiences (Procrastinating, Blue Book exams ), she also carves her own path and has her own unique adventure. Have you ever wondered what it’s like for other girls? What it’s like to be an online student? To get married?! To play an NCAA sport? Well wonder no more. Our one-of-a-kind CollegeCandy writers (and readers!) are sharing their unique experiences and opening our eyes to different college worlds.

I am a commuter student.

It’s a statement I’ve had to reiterate more times than I can count during the last four years. It’s a concept some people just can’t seem to understand. It’s something that professors don’t think about when they schedule their classes. It’s something club organizers don’t care about when they schedule their meetings. It’s something you hardly ever hear on my campus, one that’s over 70% residential. It’s a foreign concept to most college students, but not to me.

Let’s rewind a few years, back to when I was first applying to college. I made a list of what I wanted in a college, and where I wanted to go. And when it came down to it, the colleges right here in NYC, in the place I am lucky enough to live, had everything that I wanted. I applied to colleges out of state as well, but I wasn’t going to choose a college just because attending that college would or wouldn’t allow me to dorm.

So I sent out my applications and checked off that little box that indicated I was undecided about my residential status. When it came time to make my decision, I chose a college that was 20 minutes away, and while I still could have dormed, it just didn’t seem unnecessary. Was I really going to pay another $10,000 a year just to live on campus? It wasn’t like I hated living at home, and I had a car, so I wouldn’t be relying on public transportation. And 20 minutes is less time than it takes some students to walk across their campus. I simply couldn’t justify it to myself.

So I decided to give commuting a chance.

My biggest concern about living off campus was that I wouldn’t be able to be as involved on campus as I wanted to, and at first, it seemed like that was the case. Club meetings were all held late at night, and my classes usually ended by four, at the latest. I often had large gaps of time in between my classes, not enough time to head home, but just enough time to rationalize my way out of starting my reading and into Facebook stalking in the back of the library. Meeting people was more difficult as well; while everyone else was bonding with their new roommates, I did not have the same built-in social network to start with.

It was hard, but I still wanted to stick it out for a year. So instead of getting on the wait list for a dorm room, I got a job on campus. It was a job as an office assistant, a job that let me make use of those gaps in between my classes. Then, I joined the paper, despite the trip back to campus that it required. I made an effort. And as the semester went on, and I became more and more involved in the campus events that interested me, I met more and more people that shared my interests. I made friends that commuted, and friends that dormed (aka: friends that didn’t mind me crashing on their pull out couch after a late night).

Four years later, I’m on the editing staff at my school’s paper, I still work as an office assistant on campus. I’ve spent more time in my college’s library than I care to admit, and the coffee barista knows my name and my drink order on sight. The college dorm room is not a foreign concept to me and neither is the college party. But I never became a resident student and I’ve never really wanted to.

Because, honestly, although there are plenty of cons to not living on campus (Not being able to roll out of bed five minutes before class starts. Driving in a snow storm. Or a rainstorm. The price of gas. The parentals.), there are also some major perks, as well. I get home cooked meals and help with the laundry. I don’t have to share a bathroom with ten other girls, and I don’t have to share my bedroom with anyone. And there’s no dorm room drama, but there is always an excuse for being late to class (Traffic! Sorry!). There’s unlimited space on my DVR and the ability to blast my music as loud as I want. Sure, sometimes it gets annoying, (Like right now, as I sit here at a library, killing time before a club meeting that won’t start for another two hours), but I can imagine that dorm life can get annoying too.

People have told me I’m crazy. People have told me I haven’t received the “full college experience.” People have told me that I’ll regret it, that I need to live on campus in college to really “go to college.” But I disagree; I don’t think there is any one way to experience college. This was my college experience, and I wouldn’t change it.

It’s the start of a new school year and to honor that, we at CollegeCandy are bringing back the fan-favorite series, “We’ve All Been There.”  (We tried to get another national holiday/long weekend for you guys but it’s way harder than we thought so this will have to do.) Every week, Lauren – University of Michigan will comment on the common experiences all college women share – like trying to figure out if that boy is crushin’ too or stupid group projects. Read, relate, cringe and enjoy.

Your 10 page paper on the complete works of Shakespeare is due in less than a week. You vowed to spend all of Sunday at the library working on it, but an impromptu beer pong tournament broke out at your house on Saturday night and you were so busy eating Oreo Cakesters and chugging Vitaminwater that the entire day passed you by. Now it’s crunch time and you have no choice but to bang it out.

You decide not to waste any time, so you skip the long walk to the library and work at home. You tell your roommates not to bother you, lock the door to your room and settle in for some serious paper writing.

Only your desk is really messy. You can’t focus when you don’t even have space to spread out your books. So you clean it. Twenty minutes and a garbage can full of papers later, you decide to take out the trash. But before you do that, you might as well make sure there isn’t anything else that needs to be thrown away. You begin to clean your room. Once it is clean, you tell yourself, you will be able to focus.

As you pick up the pile of clothes next to your bed, though, you find your camera and are soon sitting on the bed flipping through photos from Saturday night. There are some real doozies on there and you have to share them. It won’t take long to post them on Facebook, right? You’ll just do that quickly and then get to the paper.

You load the photos online. Then you tag them. Then you caption them. Then you scroll through your newsfeed to see what everyone else is doing as you sit here on this Tiki Tuesday writing a stupid paper. You look through a few friends’ photo albums, you peruse the profile of the cute guy in one of the pictures, you message your friend asking her if he’s single.

“Sh*t,” you think to yourself. “I really have to get started on this paper.” You log off Facebook and prepare yourself to start writing.

But now you are hungry. You really didn’t eat much today, so you run downstairs to grab a bowl of cereal. As you are pouring your Frosted Mini Wheats into the bowl, your roommate walks in. You haven’t seen her all day, so you decide to eat the cereal with her quickly and then get moving on the paper.

Only it isn’t quick. You end up talking about Saturday night, the cute guy you just found on Facebook and what she should wear to the Tiki Tuesday party. Before you know it, you are up in her room rifling through her closet for the perfect “cute but not trying too hard” outfit.

Then you are on her computer looking at all the pictures you just posted.
Then you are helping her clean her room.
Then you are back in the kitchen doing all the dishes in the sink.
Then you are making coffee so you can stay up all night working on this paper.
Then you are looking for any excuse left not to sit down and write the damn thing.

By the time you actually make it back to your room, it is far too late to start writing. So you start rationalizing. “I would only get, like, a paragraph done tonight. And I work better under pressure, anyway. I’ll just skip lecture tomorrow and work on it then.”

So, you pull on a pair of PJs and head to the living room to watch some TV with the girls. You still have a few days left until the paper is due. You’ll work on it tomorrow. Promise.

Yeah, we’ve all been there. In college, there is nothing quite like the last minute.