Sometimes I wish going to college was more like playing The Sims.

According to The Sims website, “The Sims 3” is a game in which you can “fulfill [your Sims’] wishes to earn points toward their ultimate lifetime happiness, or ignore them and watch what happens when your Sims are unhappy.”

That sounds a lot like playing God to me, but having played the game before, it can get pretty addicting. Just imagine it as reality for a moment: You’re walking around with a giant green diamond above your head and you have gauges that accurately show what you need, whether it is going to the bathroom, sleeping or eating. How convenient would that be? You’d never forget when you need to eat and you’d always know when you can’t pull off the all-nighter. Sure, you may end up putting your baby in a dishwasher, but they’d be totally fine — and quite clean.

One of my personal favorites would be how easy getting a job would be. In previous games, getting a job was as easy as responding to a “help wanted” ad in the newspaper. I’m not going to lie, that would be amazing, although sometimes the ads in the game are for jobs like being a criminal.

But hey, in this economy, beggars can’t be choosers. You just have to hope the people you’d rob won’t have those pesky burglar alarms like in the game.

Apply this to an NIU setting. I think classes would be much easier if by simply going to class you’d automatically learn the information without having to try. But what about after class?

“I think there would be a lot louder, longer and harder parties going on over the weekends,” said sophomore psychology major Amanda Werley.

While I can agree with her, I don’t know if having Douglas or Stevenson Hall becoming a 24-hour party mansion would be a good thing.

Krista Krepp, junior political science and history major, thinks relationships would drastically change.

“I think it would be easier [if college was more like ‘The Sims’], but boring,” Krepp said. “All you’d have to do is talk to someone for a long time and you’d be soul mates. It’s [less] time spent but it’d be less exciting.”

I think there would definitely be some perks to a more Sim-like college life, but that fact of the matter is college will never be like The Sims. Each and every one of us will have to work at an education. No matter how much I wish it were true, we’re going to have to study, not just attend class and mindlessly absorb information.

We’re going to have to remember to eat and to sleep regularly without the aid of some gauge to remind us. And we’re all going to have to work on our relationships. That’s life. While it’s going to be hard at times, it’s not without its rewards, and I personally wouldn’t want it easier.

If jobs, good grades and overall success are just handed to you, it kind of depreciates the value of all these things.