Sometimes, when my alarm on my phone is going off, I hit the snooze button for those nine extra minutes of bliss before I have to start my day. Other times, I cannot even stop thinking about my day ahead long enough to get the energy to move my hand to even top my alarm. It seems like as the semester keeps winding up, my life has become this constant feeling of living shakily under an alarm that I can't even so much as snooze. We'll call this alarm 'anxiety'.

I think that most college students can relate to this; Waking up, going through the day, and sitting at the dinner table thinking, "Wow, I survived," then doing homework, and heading to bed — not always to sleep, though. This past week, I took an intimate look inside my head and really tried to pinpoint what exactly cause this alarm to keep going off.

First, I found that my room was a major trigger. I had been so busy with school that I didn't have the time to care that my room was so messy and disorganized. I'm definitely the type of person to becomes dysfunctional in a messy environment, and because my room was messy I would find any excuse to stay out of it. There lied the problem. . . there was no way that I could clean my room if I was never actually in it.

So I took a deep breath and put on my favorite record — which by the way is "The B-Sides" by The Gaslight Anthem — and got to work. In just a matter of minutes, I was already starting to feel better. I was suddenly motivated and so much calmer with every passing minute. I even found myself singing and dancing in my room as I was organizing and cleaning. As I began to organize my room, I could feel my brain declutter as well.

Second, I found that even though I could manage a busy schedule in my day, the uncertainty of knowing exactly what was going to happen was also making me very anxious. So I grabbed my planner, dusted it off, and began to write everything that I had going on in it; When I say I wrote everything, I mean I wrote everything. It was like cleaning my room all over again, and the best part was I even sat down at my desk and did this in my room. Something I hadn't done in ages.

Even though there might not be any way to really 'rid myself' of anxiety, I have found that figuring out what is cluttered in my life, and then decluttering it, is what really gets me through the bad days. Life can be hectic, but there is not reason to be afraid of it once you find the tools and strategies you need to manage it.