I'm going off to college next fall and I'm so excited for ya know, all that stuff, but I'm sorta bummed at the same time because I have no idea if I'm going to be able to manage to keep riding and I don't think I'm ready to give up riding till I'm out of college.

It will really depend on what you're going to college for. The more study intensive education, the less free time you'll have. I've always been told that it's 3 hours of study time per hour spent in class. If you're taking 12 credit hours, that's 36 hours a week. Obviously, not all classes will require that much studying.

Personally, I wasn't able to do it. My education was very study intensive (lots of math and science) with a lot of assignments that took several hours to finish, i.e papers. College can be fantastic in that you can build your own schedule and end up with only having class 3 days a week. However, this doesn't always mean that you'll have free time, or even want to do anything.

I think what I'm mostly trying to say is: don't immediately jump into trying to find a place to ride. Ease yourself into college life and don't pile things on too quickly or you'll risk burning yourself out. It's a lot different than highschool and can take time to settle in. If you can manage the first semester without issue, then I'd look into riding.

As far as time management: google calendars and making to-do lists.

What Eury said. Also I don't know if this is a thing in the US but here we have lots of extra-curricular groups and many unis have a riding team. Again it can still be expensive and time consuming but maybe an option?

I'm on the competitive flat/jumping team for my college this year and my particular team was not time intensive at all. One lesson a week for an hour and you're good - the problems were with the actual team itself and the horses. You get the opportunity to show based off of if you party with the team at clubs (btw, most of them are underage) and the horses are half crippled. The shows were fun but if you get a bad draw (IHSA) you're screwed. I was pretty lucky with most of my draws though...

I rode for my college's equestrian team; twice a week lessons and shows on some of the weekends. I was a BFA graphic design and art history double major with a massive workload, and I made it work. The money was the biggest issue for me, and I blew through quite a lot of it, but it was worth it. Lots of great memories and friends made through the team :)

The school I'm going to unfortunately doesn't have an equestrian team (it wasn't one of my major considerations when picking a school, though it would've been a plus). I'll keep an eye out if maybe there's a club or some school thing, but I don't think the school is involved in any equestrian things.

I worked as many hours as I could get during breaks. At one time, I had three different part-time jobs and was working like 60-70 hour weeks during the summer. I also worked a few hours a week on campus in a cafe as a barista.

Biology major? Expect lots of studying. The general pre-req classes are going to have you swamped with lots of frivolous assignments that are nothing but time eaters.

Used books. Avoid buying new if you can. See if you can get the books from people who've just left the class. If at all possible, get your books from amazon/newegg instead of the campus store. Generally, the books there are dramatically marked up.

Skip getting food/coffee from the cafe/store/food court. Also heavily marked up. It's cheaper just to bring your own, if you're going to be on campus long enough to need it.

Basically? Just go as cheap as possible. "Do I need this, or do I just want this?" before every purchase.

Thanks for everything guys! Hopefully all this helps and it'll work out so the ponies don't have to wait too long haha

I'm in exactly the same boat Ginger. Also a bio major entering college this fall. While I haven't committed yet, the college I'm about 97% sure I'm going to end up at has an IHSA team that looks great and from what I can tell is genuinely fun and about riding. I hope you can find something that will work for you.