Dear Struggling College Student,

You were probably a straight A student in high school, or at least a high achiever. So was I. Every year was marked by scholarship offers, academic awards, honors classes. College was going to be a breeze.

Except it wasn’t. That awkward roommate situation, professors who barely remember you exist, suddenly meeting people who make your work look pale in comparison. I was a straight A student in high school. And I barely made passing grades my spring semester of my freshman year.

I panicked. This was the end of it all, the end of my college career, any hope I had for a decent future. My parents never had the chance to go to school, and I’m the first in my family to go for a degree. It’s a lot to have on one’s shoulders. The terror of not only failing the classes, but also of having to tell them that I barely passed made me anxious, sick, and skittish. I didn’t sleep well, and studied even less. Every day I imagined scenarios of me just slowly devolving into a life I had always feared, one of stagnation and unhappiness.

Then one day, I stopped thinking about a future that hadn’t arrived just yet. So what if I barely passed my calculus class or any of my other classes? I talked it through, not only with friends and family, but with myself. I wrote it down, and seriously thought about my anxiety. I became comfortable with the idea that I hadn’t passed something with a decent grade, that I struggled to pay attention in a subject. Because it showed me something no advisor had told me: I was unhappy.

I used to be a mathematic student. Thinking about the idea of wanting to teach students in the middle school or high school level got me excited, and it always has. But the major was depressing; it didn’t get me going in the morning, I dreaded going to class for it. It was missing the spark I found in my current major, where I study to become an educator for elementary school students and learning to teach the main four subjects.

And I failed a lot in life before I realized this.

But I’m still in school. And you will be too. Failing or barely passing a class or two isn’t the end of your world. Changing your major after realizing you don’t love the subject anymore isn’t the craziest thing you’ll do in college.

Don’t let college ruin your future with anxiety about said future.

You can pull through this.