Alyshea Wimberly
Dr. McMahand
English 1101
2 March 2015

“Breaking Bad Under Pressure” “Breathe in…and out”. “Deep breath in…and exhale slowly”. “Now repeat”. As cliché or silly as it may seem, this little mantra is what gets me through the days where the world around me feels as if it is about to come crashing down. As a freshman in college, I am faced with numerous challenges and obstacles that I must overcome. However, one thing that I am unable to conquer is the social adjustment including, but not limited to, the balance between social and academic priorities. I thought that maybe keeping a journal would help me find that common ground and understand why I struggle so much with it and it actually helped. I was able to see the problem and the root of its causes on paper making it easier to analyze and process. At first I predicted that this would be a very difficult and confusing thing but it turned out to be easier than I expected. It made me realize that not holding myself accountable for my work and the consequences that occur if I do not do what is assigned, outweigh the fun of going out every night and that the only way I can maintain balance is by establishing some sort of self-discipline whether it be drastic or on a smaller scale. My first semester of college proved to be the most stressful and unorganized. I came to school with the mindset that it was going to be easy, just like high school but what I got was a very rude awakening. The stress began to pile up once I became a party promoter as my classes and any academic commitments fell to the backburner. I began to get so behind on my work to the point where I was failing pretty much most of my classes and academic probation was a strong possibility. I was going out every night whether it was an event that I was promoting or a local party; no matter what I was there. Once I realized my academic standing, all of the stress hit me. How was I going to catch up? If I failed out of college, what were my options? How did I let it get this bad? All of these questions along with a mixture of so many other emotions were all that seemed to cross my mind. In hopes of gaining some sort of guidance in this situation, I met with my advisor. She pretty much told me I had a small time frame to pull my grades up to a passing level and that if I was unable to do so, my time here at West Georgia would be cut very short. With that scary, yet realistic incentive, I made a decision that I never thought I would: I stopped promoting.
Making that decision was very difficult because I had invested so much time and effort into promoting that it became second nature to me, something that I enjoyed and was very good at. However, I knew my schoolwork had to come first if I wanted to do anything substantial with my life. So, I talked to all my teachers and some were more lenient than others but I knew this was not going to be a walk in the park. I used all resources available to me like tutors, professor’s office hours, group study sessions, and a lot of time at the library. The huge stress of getting back on track and staying focused/committed was slowly fading but I know that if I were to regress in any way like procrastination, I would not reach the goal I had set. There were times when I wanted to give up and quit altogether for the stress was too much to bear, but I did not. After many