College is a constant struggle of “Do I want to eat, workout, study, socialize or cry?”
If you thought senior year of high school was stressful, multiply that by 10 (maybe even 100) when you get to college.
This is coming from personal experience. College can be very rough at times. You could have one week where everything goes smoothly, not too many difficult assignments and before you know it it’s the weekend. Then the next week could feel like an eternity with back to back exams, sleepless nights, something going wrong almost every day and to top it off you start your period (this may or may not have been my week).
I was to the point where I just felt mentally, physically and emotionally drained. I would break down and cry over anything and everything. (The fact that I was on my period just made this even worse.) By the end of the long and dreadful week, I got to that state of feeling sorry for myself and feeling as if I had the worst week of my entire life and I was just ready for things to stop going wrong.
Focusing on the negative is what made me so weak.
As college students, we have a lot on our plate. For me, this semester has been jam-packed with new things to add to my schedule and although it has been extremely hard to balance, I know that I can do it. Sometimes we have to ask ourselves, “Am I putting too much pressure on myself?” and a lot of times, you may find the answer to be yes. College is all about teaching us how to balance our lives.
We also need to realize that our own stress-level is within our control, to some degree. We have to learn how to manage our stress and focus on our own mental health. And I think this is just another huge lesson we’re forced to learn the hard way in college.
Many times we can also feel the pressure to be involved in as many things as we can from campus organizations to sports, jobs, internships, etc. (and yet still have a social life on top of it all) because we feel it is our last chance to build up a resumé and get as much experience as we can before diving into “the real world.” Although the experience is very valuable, there’s nothing like walking through your days like a zombie because you’ve booked yourself so much that you have no energy left. To me, this will only make the experience less valuable because you’ll be so exhausted that you won’t have the energy to put in your best effort to really make the experience worth-while.
Only take on what you can handle. Don’t over-do it.
Sometimes we just want to push aside our giant stack of books to relax and spend time with people, and that is perfectly OK. Actually, you should definitely do this at least once a week. It's completely healthy and it will make you feel better and distract you from your stress for a little while. Sometimes we need a day to slack off because those moments you have with you friends or family are moments that you can't get back and you don't want to graduate college knowing that you missed out on so much time with the people you love just for a piece of paper.
College life can be a real struggle but just remind yourself that this stress and overwhelming feeling is temporary. It won’t last forever and you will get through it.
If you're having a bad day, or a bad week, just remember that you have it within you to rise above whatever is bringing you down. Try to treat the world better than it treated you.
