Kyle Juszczyk doesn't have to worry about money for textbooks and isn't slurping down Cup O' Noodles, but he is back living in college dorms.
The Ravens' second-year fullback returned to Harvard, where he's taking the last four classes he needs to graduate with a bachelor's degree in economics.
It's no piece of cake (as one might imagine) to polish off a degree at Harvard. Juszczyk took a lighter load last fall, then left school in the spring to focus on preparing for the NFL draft, knowing he would return a year later after his rookie NFL season.
"I left my two toughest economics courses for this semester," Juszczyk said with a laugh.
"I totally could have taken care of them earlier, but for my senior fall semester, I only took three classes because I wanted to have an easy load for the season. I figured I would worry about that a year from now when I come back. It's catching up to me."
The hardest part hasn't been the coursework, which Juszczyk says is going well. It was re-adjusting to campus life, especially this time as a NFL player.
There aren't a whole lot of Harvard football players that reach the NFL (the Ravens had another with Matt Birk, but that's an anomaly). So when word quickly got out that Juszczyk re-enrolled, he was treated like a celebrity by his classmates and bombarded with questions for a few weeks about what life is like in the NFL.
"It was weird at first just getting back into the student life and living in a dorm and sitting in lectures," he said. "But after a few weeks it went back to how it used to be and not so many people were asking me questions and stuff."
Dorm life has been a whole other adventure. Nearly everybody at Harvard lives on campus, so Juszczyk had no other option, even though he could certainly afford one. He's currently sharing a 140-square foot dorm with another former Harvard football teammate.
"I probably have the worst dorm I've had in my four years here," he said. "I showed up in the spring and all of the rooms were taken. It's pretty tiny."
The one relief Juszczyk has is the knowledge that the NFL is waiting just around the corner. Unlike other second-semester seniors who are worried about landing a job after graduation, Juszczyk is slated to become the Ravens' starting fullback.
"To have that insurance that I already have a job, sometimes it helps me out when I start stressing about my schoolwork," he said.
