Before transferring to my current university, I had never taken more than four classes at a time at my community college. Technically, this is considered “full-time,” but taking 13 credits never felt like full-time to me. I was able to juggle a part-time job, a very demanding extra-curricular activity, and have a life outside of school and still make good grades.

Once I transferred to a university and became “officially” full-time my second semester, everything changed.

For some reason, taking those few extra credits shot the difficulty up much higher than I was expecting. In the grand scheme of things, it was only two extra credit hours, and I was able to work and be in extra clubs and organizations outside of school in the past; why did it suddenly become so difficult to take five classes when everyone else seemed to be doing just fine?

I’ll probably never be able to pin down the exact reason, but either way, suddenly feeling overwhelmed just because I was in five classes instead of four had me feeling pretty down about myself. After all, almost everyone else on campus took five classes every semester and had jobs and social lives just like I did. They just didn’t seem to be stressing.

I look at my sorority sisters, my church friends, and my friends in the same major as me and wonder how they manage to be full-time every semester and still tackle being in clubs, having one or more jobs, a social life and still making it out alive with a decent GPA. Being a full-time student and still handling adult life feels like a superpower that was given to every college student except me sometimes. Even though I know that’s not the case, I can’t help but feel like I’m surrounded by people who are more successful than me just because they’re not overwhelmed by 15 credit hours.

For whatever reason, I just can’t handle being a full-time student with everything else that I have going on. For most of the year, I only worked one job and only participated in one organization. Even then, it felt overwhelming just to be present when I had five classes to worry about. Having five classes stresses me out. I feel like I’m always up later than I should be, even when I spend the whole day trying to get work done.

For a variety of reasons, I’m not going to be a full-time student anymore after this semester. I just can’t mentally handle it, and for the sake of my mental health, I can’t make my whole life revolve around school. For anyone else that might be feeling the same way about school, I want you to remember these things:

It’s okay if you feel like taking five classes is too much.

Just because it’s what most people are doing doesn’t mean it’s the only right way to finish school.

It’s okay if you have to drop down to four, three, or even fewer classes just to get by. It’s far better to take fewer classes and get stellar grades than it is to take a full load and not be able to put all your effort into them because you also have to work, do community service, and network by joining clubs and organizations.

Not being able to handle taking five or more classes at once doesn’t make you stupid. Everyone has different stress capacities, and no one mind is better than the other for being able to handle more.

Finally, your worth is not defined by how many classes you can handle at once.

I’ll say that again in case you didn’t catch it the first time:

Your worth is not defined by how many classes you can handle at once.