"It made me feel good about my college experience so far," Bromley said. "All of my classes this semester were actually a little too easy for me. I'm excited to have more difficult ones."

One of the challenges that college students face daily is managing their study habits and time effectively. For Bromley, he said this has gotten easier to navigate throughout the semester.

"It got a little low when I was working for a bit, but I ended up having to quit my job to focus on school and it's been fine since then," Bromley said.

As the pressure to finish the semester strong builds, so does the stress and burnout that can impact both academic performance and mental well-being. Despite the challenges, Bromley emphasized that taking care of himself remains a top priority.

"Having to quit my job to focus more has given me more time to actually keep a work-life balance so that I'm not causing myself mental distress while doing school," Bromley said. 

For games and interactive media freshman Joseph Friend, he said his first semester as a college student went well, enjoying the campus and all it has to offer.

"I really enjoyed living on campus getting to experience all of my classes and my major," Friend said. "Finding new ways of studying and getting used to the classes compared to high school, it’s definitely been a change, but I really love it."

Part of that adjustment involved taking more time to study, as Friend said starting college math "was definitely a big jump."

"With due dates, I am a big procrastinator. Getting over that was kind of hard," Friend said. "I have found that taking breaks to work on an assignment and taking breaks and finding fun activities like going around campus is how I would deal with stress."

Friend said better time management and fighting procrastination will be key to having a better spring semester, offering advice that reaching out to professors and TAs can make tasks seem more manageable.

Digital storytelling and animation sophomore Sierra Wordelman said the start of the semester was good, but that feelings of anxiety and uncertainty started to creep in, asking herself "What am I even doing here?"

Wordelman said she worked through the challenge by talking with her professors about what she could do better, saying "they held me together.”

Though her semester was not the best, Wordelman said it showed her that professors are present to help students succeed.

"That was a sucky moment, but I'm glad it happened because now I know they're here for me," Wordelman said.

Wordelman also struggled to balance having a part-time job while being a full-time student, with one of the harder classes being an advanced comic book creation class. 

"I had from the middle of August to last week to get a 20-page fully illustrated comic done complete," Wordelman said. "I worked on this thing every single day. I have never worked so hard in a class before."

Through her support network, Wordelman was provided a sense of community that made her realize every student in college has good days and bad.

"We're all in this together," Wordelman said. "We're all humans, we all have mistakes. For me, at the end of the day that's all that matters."