I love my school and I love my friends there, but sometimes it makes me really mentally and emotionally drained.

The Sunday that Thanksgiving break ended was the first time that I have ever not wanted to go back to college because it would be too exhausting, too overwhelming, too stressful. I didn’t want to go through the last 2 weeks of this semester because I had spoiled myself at home with all the free time I had to relax and unwind, and all the sleep I had caught up on. I was almost scared to return and have to throw myself back into the swing of things.

Thinking back to this fear, I realized it was just because I wasn’t going into my semester with my priorities right.

I was thinking about college as a foreign place, with a connotation of dread and overwhelming rigor and this was because in my head, that is how I had been treating it.

Leading up to break, I hadn’t been spending my time back at school correctly. I was spending all of my free time outside of my dorm room, running around doing errands, trying to get ahead in my classes, and not taking care of myself.

I wasn’t treating college like my home, but a place where I was forced to be, filled with all of these unrealistic expectations and amounts of work that I felt I would never finish. I spent all my free time obsessing over that instead of unwinding with my friends, sleeping, or doing what makes me happy.

The second I got back to my dorm room from break, I decorated for Christmas. Nothing makes me happier than seeing Christmas decorations all around. And since then I have been spending more time in the living room with my friends, rather than locked away in the library. I have been making time to go to the gym, and actually cook food that doesn’t come from a box.

I changed my mindset about what makes college college and started turning it into my home again. I tried to see it as other do, a place to live where I also sometimes take classes, instead of just school while sometimes getting a chance to live in between.

Earlier this week I was walking back to my dorm room in the rain, soaked, cold, and miserable, when I passed by one of my friends. When I waved at him, he said back to me, “Lovely weather for ducks”, and I laughed. Suddenly the rain wasn’t so bad. I realized that from a different mindset, it could be welcome- you just have to adopt that one instead.

You can change your opinion about anything with a difference of mindset and I hope anyone reading this who is overwhelmed with finals or anything in life can find some comfort in that. It’s not self-delusion, it’s just changing your mentality from pessimism to optimism.

Don’t look at finals as a possibility of failing, look at it as an opportunity to show off everything you’ve worked hard for this year. And don’t look at college as a place that’s only designed to bring stress, think about it like a home. Only positive thinking will get you through your toughest moments.