It's been about a month and a half since school started, and already Snapchat stories and Instagram feeds are filled with pictures of our peers having a great time at parties or social events. The boy who lives upstairs is constantly taking business calls for the start-ups he has already founded. And here I am sitting in my room studying for a test or working on a CS project every minute I’m not in class.

FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out, is a a very common phenomenon for college students and generally occurs when students believe that their peers are having exciting adventures and exploring the world and generally doing really cool things that they will never get to do. By not doing these cool things, these college students believe they are missing out on crucial opportunities to develop as human beings or to network for the future.

FOMO is quite real. And, we need to understand that to help ourselves stop worrying about missing out on things, we need to first admit that we are, in fact, worried that we are not doing as interesting or amazing things as the people around us and that that is okay.

First, we need to realize that if we’re feeling FOMO because of people on Snapchat and Instagram, then we should realize that these are often very skewed perspectives of people. Even though we can say this to ourselves, we need to truly understand and believe that what our peers show on social media is not their entire lives.

Secondly, it's totally possible to try to go to different events, but it doesn’t have to be at the expense of your academic career. If you want, try going to tech talks or info sessions related to your major or personal interests. Otherwise, set up a floor movie night or floor boba bonding session with as many people as you can and try to get to know the people you’re sharing a floor with. More likely than not, your best experiences will be with these people, your new friends.

I understand that it might be difficult to actively try to end the FOMO, but this is the best thing to do for yourself. I wish you the best of luck, and now I’m going to try to take my own advice.