In college, you are hardly ever alone. You eat meals in a dining hall filled with hundreds of other students. Your study areas are filled with people from your classes and floor. Even if you go back to your room, your roommate is there. As someone who often needs time to decompress and have a break from people from time to time, I struggled with being surrounded by people I knew 24/7. By second semester of my freshman year, I was getting more and more anxious and was getting annoyed by almost everything. Someone could just be breathing and I’d be so annoyed.
First semester of sophomore year, I decided that I was going to fix this problem. I realized that while the chances of me finding a space where I can be completely by myself for a few minutes was highly unlikely, there were ways that I could find time and places where I could decompress. I started studying off campus and taking walks off campus. While there were obviously always people around me at the places I studied and the streets I walked on were not empty, they were generally people I did not know or normally see in my day to day life at BU so I felt like I was in my own little world separate from university.
From this experience, I realized how important “me time” was. “Me time” is basically just time that you get to yourself to do whatever you please without having to worry about interruptions from other people. Ever since I figured out getting off campus by myself was a good method of decompressing, I have been significantly less anxious and become less annoyed by the little things people do.
If anyone finds themselves becoming more annoyed than usual by people or significantly overwhelmed by constantly being surrounded by people, I strongly recommend getting off campus at least once a week by yourself. It’ll do wonders for your mental health. At first you may feel a bit weird and lonely walking around alone. I know I did at first. After a while, it’ll feel perfectly normal. I think it’s really important for everyone to find an outlet on or near campus where he or she can decompress. You don’t fully realize what a toll always being expected to be social and constantly being surrounded by the people you go to class with and live with can have on you until you go home for the summer and you have time to decompose again.
Before coming to college, I took for granted the hour or so I had at home by myself before the rest of my family came home from school and work. I also took for granted that my room was just my room and no one else’s. During the first semester of college, I never really took the time to decompress since I was caught up in the excitement of college, but once I spent all of second semester anxious and constantly annoyed, I realized that if I cannot find a place to be alone on campus, I would need to be creative with how I got my “me time”.
