I was always an extremely motivated student. In elementary and middle school, it was a punishment to not be able to go to school. I was one of the few who liked doing homework, and I was always reading. I was the typical bookworm nerd.
When I got older, that changed, as it naturally does. High school became more about survival and test scores, social interactions became tenser, but that is expected with any high schooler.
College is a different story. Everyone I see looks miserable almost every time they walk into a class. Many people skip gen-ed classes just because they feel that they are a waste of time. Even I, the once highly motivated student, dreads getting out of bed in the morning occasionally when I know I have class. My grades are still high, but I sometimes don’t feel the same urgency in my education as I once did. Learning doesn’t feel as exciting as it once did, and that’s extremely disappointing as someone who worked all my life to get to the place that I’m at.
Why do we all feel so unmotivated in college? Is it us having too much on our plate, or are we just falling out of the educational spirit?
To preface this, I know a lot of people did not feel that same love with education as I have. Many people do what they have to do and don’t feel the need to go above and beyond, and that’s completely okay. I will never fault someone for not feeling the same way as I did, but this article is aimed more at people who started out like me, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, in the education system.
I feel that this is to blame; we all have too much on our plate when it comes to everything we are involved with at school.
Almost everyone I know has a hand in something outside of just their classwork. Many of us take part in the dozens of clubs available on our campus, many of us are involved in sports, and almost everyone works or participates in an internship. We are busier than we will ever be in the real world, and while it is helping to prepare us to be on our own, it’s also overwhelming us.
A lot of us also have social lives that we want to keep up. If we pour all of our free time into classes and clubs and work, it almost feels like we’re working towards nothing. Sure, some may say that working hard now pays off in the long run, but realistically, many of us don’t want to wait for the distant future. While college is the time for learning about our future careers, it’s also a time for learning about ourselves.
When we work too hard, we don’t have time for that self reflection and discovery. Instead, we feel swamped with work and exhausted by the time we do get around to spending time with friends. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve cancelled on things I’ve been excited for because I worked too hard that day.
I know that I feel overwhelmed at almost every point of my day. If I could go back, I certainly wouldn’t have put as much as I have on my plate in the hopes of a beautifully detailed resume. I am on the board of three different clubs, I have a full courseload, and I work two different jobs through both the summer and the school year. I barely have any time for myself anymore, and when I do, I want to do absolutely nothing.
So, imagine how I feel when I have to spend that precious time doing homework for a class that’s at the absolute back of my mind.
A lot of times, classes will have no homework. In other cases, like the one I have found myself in this semester, classes are stacking chapters upon chapters upon chapters onto students’ heads, with the professors seeming like they believe that students have nothing else to do but to read.
I find it extremely frustrating that college feels like it’s built against overachieving students. We are told to participate heavily in everything we do, work as much as we can, and sometimes it feels like in our preparation for the real world, we are so close to it that we struggle to be able to balance your studies with that.
Therefore, if I can’t catch up with the homework, why would I go to the class? At that point, the workload feels like going to class is almost an afterthought, so if I’m learning from the book, why would I go? Why would I stress myself out even more by going to class if I’m not up to date with the information in the first place?
According to the American College Health Association’s Spring 2026 poll on undergraduate mental health, 44.3% of students reported that their academics were a huge factor in their stress levels, 33.8% of students cited their career, and a whopping 75% of students claimed to be stressed due to procrastination. 73% of students also reported feeling moderately or highly stressed.
Many times, procrastination is the downfall of a lot of students’ productivity. Once one assignment is pushed off, the work keeps piling up, and at the end of the day, it’s hard to keep your head above water. Many students never end up doing the work, and it leads to academic suspension, failing the course, or having to withdraw. This is never the ideal, but we see it happening more and more frequently as we move further into our education.
Let me warn you; do not fall into this trap. This is, from what I understand, to help train you for the real world, as unlikely as it feels. Many jobs, the more involved you get and the further up you move, the more will be put on your plate. Some people will have relationships and families, some will be put on long projects that take up time outside of work, some will have these issues and more. If you’re able to manage your time well enough, it will all be done and you’ll still have time to do something for yourself.
Being able to go to class is a different story. I feel like this is all about motivation. We are all paying to be here, or someone in our lives is helping us to pay. By getting dismayed and frustrated by our workload and the fact that you may not like a professor, this ultimately will hurt you in the future. Think about it, if you never went to work, would you have a job? If you never spent time with your friends, would you still have those same relationships?
So, at the end of the day, set that alarm. Open that textbook. It’s all about time management. It’s unrealistic to think that if you sit down for an hour, you’ll finish everything in a day. If you’re able to balance your time and workload, you can take on anything in the workplace or in your personal life.
Please, don’t let your future self down.
