Honors College Art & Science of Emotions Fall 2017 (1:20 p.m.) Sadness Journal | Page 27

closet friends are across the state or across the country. Though society makes it clear that everyone must
make new friends during college, and that should be a happy experience that causes personal and social
growth, that doesn’t change the fact that there are friends who are miles away are being missed. The next
form of sadness comes from the college experience in general. Sadness stems from a multitude of areas,
starting with coursework. Society always tells students to be excited to further their education, but when
that education means staying up all night to study for an exam and still failing, or writing a ten-page essay
on the importance of the fishfly at 3 A.M (highly researched, of course), it becomes difficult to enjoy the
actual learning. Students become stressed and sad, trying to juggle all assignments, receive good grades,
and still have time to socialize with their friends, and eventually sleep, and that’s not even counting the
hours of work at a job, or commitments to any clubs or activities. These necessities, which society says are
so important and should make a student happy, begin to drag the student down, stressing them out and
making them sad instead of happy. The sadness stems from the sheer weight of everything on a student’s
shoulders. Once it becomes too much, which it often does, there is a feeling of dread and sadness that
overtake almost every other emotion. This sadness is working with the feeling of failure, or not being
good enough to handle everything at once. Not to mention the sadness that comes after failing a test, los-
ing a friend, breaking up with a significant other, missing family, or even just running out of the cereal you
eat for breakfast every morning. These situations are commonplace on college campuses, and for students,
they’re just a part of everyday life; just another thing to fuel the rollercoaster of emotions.
Another significant cause of sadness and stress is college tuition and living expenses. Everyone
knows that college is expensive, and individuals around the world are encouraged to go into significant
debt to further their education, to open doors for opportunities after they graduate. Though encouraged
by society, this is a huge burden on almost every student attending university. Students are forced to work
either part time or full time just to pay for living expenses, not including tuition, just to get by, on top of
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