It All Ends Today.

Cue the noisy sobbing and grab the popcorn, because we're in for quite a post! Don't worry, it's not what you think. 

Today is my first day of sophomore year at Johns Hopkins.

And to be honest, for the first time ever, I really, really don't want to go to school. I mean, every person, as a kid or teen or young adult doesn't necessary WANT to go to school - the early mornings, the homework, the time-consuming classes... don't get me wrong, I'm a true nerd, I love learning and really enjoy the content of classes I take. But for the first time, I just DON'T want to go back. I dread starting classes.

I'm the type of person that never stops. I dedicate myself to whatever I put my mind to, and I put my 100% in. All the effort I can give, and then some. That is what has happened my entire life - but it was different when I went through freshman year (at Hopkins). 

Freshman year, I gave 200%. I was the student who started studying for midterms (like, REALLY studying) weeks before the midterm. I was constantly at professors' and TAs' office hours, and I always did my homework ahead of time. Yet, being ahead never meant that I stopped working. It just meant that I finished early, so I could start the next thing early. And it certainly paid off - my GPA is excellent, especially for an engineering student at Johns Hopkins. But clubs, organizations, club sports, a highly active blog, and a great social life, and basically...

I burned out over freshman year. But I still haven't stopped working.

I worked all summer. I took five credits of summer classes at Hopkins, from May 27th to June 27th. Then on June 30th, I started working - full-time. 40 hours a week, plus a 30-60-minute commute each way (traffic sucks). Still managed to do a post a day on my blog. Still managed to hang out with my friends here at home, and the ones staying at Hopkins over the summer. But... I never got the break I *needed*, from freshman year.

It wasn't any one thing that got to me - each "thing", be it the academics, the sports, the blog, the clubs/organizations, the social life, I could handle, no problem. But the combination of everything got to me at times, for sure. It's weird to say that finals week was actually one of the most relaxing couple of weeks while university was still in session, because, no classes, no organizations/clubs, and good excuses for not hanging out with friends or going to the gym or attending practice. Ha.

So here I am, entering sophomore year. Don't get me wrong, I am so ready to work. I need to be busy, to be working, to have thirty things to do. I'm a great multitasker, and I love being busy. Pressure keeps me focused, instead of stressing me out. But it's really said when you dread going back to class but feel a small amount of relief at being able to wake up a few hours later because you don't have to commute anywhere.

Anyway. So what does this boil down to? In the end, I'm not changing too much in my routine, for now. I'm still going to have a post up every day. In October/November, I'll be launching a new meme (hopefully), and that will decrease my reviews per week from four to three. I NEED THIS.

In terms of school, I'm doing seventeen credits, plus ten hours of work (at the same office I worked at over the summer), plus the same clubs, organizations, sports, and social life (hopefully LOL). Something might have to give, and that will definitely be the blog first, if anything. Right now, I've got a good hold on things... of course, classes start TODAY, so I haven't actually tested out my plans. Consider September a trial run of all things new. I'll definitely post something similar to this post if I need to let you all know anything about a hiatus or decrease in posts or so on. 

In the meantime... wanna see what projects I accomplished over the summer? :D

- Took an advanced physics course and lab in four weeks - and got a 4.0!

- Worked 38-40 hours a week on campus.

- Cleaned out and organized my Hopkins email account: this hadn't been cleaned out since I opened the account, in May 2013!

- Added links to all of my reviews on Goodreads: any review on Goodreads that was originally posted on my blog now has a blog review link embedded in my Goodreads review. Yay!

- Cleared out my Bloglovin blogs: okay, I'm "following" many blogs via Bloglovin, but I'm not visiting a good number of them. So, I weeded through the ones I'm genuinely interested in, and the ones that I probably just followed for giveaways or that stopped blogging.

- Cleared out my GFC blogs: this one took FOREVER, because what I was going through was nearly 300 blogs that simply are not active anymore. So, I said goodbye to about 300 GFC blogs.

- Edited my visible tags: this was already good to go, I just hide a couple that were too specific for anyone to actually care to use.

- Got about a week and a half in scheduled reviews and posts

Most of the blog/book-related things were done at work :D When there was downtime, I would take a few hours and simply edit something, like all of my Goodreads reviews (adding the links), or clearing out thousands of emails in my Hopkins email account. This downtime started getting scarce in August, when things started picking up (remember, I work on campus, in an office that concerns students).

So. That's been my life. What exactly is ending today? My summer "vacation", my working full-time, my sanity, possibly? We'll see. I'm not looking for anyone's sympathy, or pity, or anything. Trust me, this post was more for me than it was for you.

In the end (of this post, that is), I want to thank all of you for supporting me, my blog, reading in general, publishers, authors, and so on. Especially for what you do for me - I see every Facebook/Goodreads/blog comment, tweet, message, email, pageview, and I appreciate everything. There would be no blog success without people liking my blog, and every and any little thing you do is so very appreciated. I love you all <3