College is an amazing place. I mean that 110% no matter how much it takes a toll on me sometimes (or like, all the time). You're under no parental supervision, which means you can do whatever you want. You can watch Disney movies all night or eat a whole jar of Nutella and there will be no one to stop you.

But, as they say, with great power comes great responsibility. Being all on your own at the same time means there is no authority figure to remind you to do simple tasks, motivate you to get things done without procrastinating, or even comfort you and push you to do your best when stress over schoolwork is getting the best of you.

For someone with anxiety or really any mental health issue in general, this can be hard to deal with sometimes.

If you're like me, you probably overthink everything. From one bad grade you got on an exam to whether or not your roommate secretly hates you. One seemingly small occurrence will send your brain into overdrive, even when you know fully well that it's not as big a deal as your anxiety is making it out to be.

And you constantly get told by friends and family who don't know what it's like, not to overthink something, to stop worrying so much, everything will be okay, etc. Pro tip: if you tell an anxious person this...don't. We know things will work out eventually. We know when we're reading too much into something. Do you think we genuinely enjoy being like this? If we had the capacity to control what our anxiety tells us, do you think we'd willingly be stressing out so much?

If you're like me you also likely procrastinate horribly, all the time. No matter how hard you try not to. I feel like procrastination is a universal thing among college students. But I also feel like for those of us with mental health issues, those issues make it even worse.

For me personally, the main reason I end up pushing work to the eleventh hour most of the time is because I'm just very active on my campus. I do a shit ton of activities during the day besides classes like choir, theatre productions, our acappella group, volunteering, music lessons, dance, and a work study job.

So it's already very late at night by the time I get a moment to finally work on my assignments...but then I will usually get very anxious and worked up about an assignment no matter how small it may be, and end up putting it off for at least another hour or so, busying myself with Tumblr or other things on the Internet, because it simply takes me a great deal of mental energy to motivate myself to start working on something. (I literally ended up writing this right now when I had the intention of studying for an exam I have tomorrow morning.)

If you're like me and as busy as I am, you may not realize that perhaps the reason you involve yourself in so much is because of your anxiety. You like having multiple ways to distract yourself and temporarily escape from all the things that may be stressing you out so you don't have to think about them.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't do all those activities just for the sake of filling time. I genuinely really love singing and dance and everything else I do outside of class. But I definitely know that the ability to escape my anxiety is part of why I love them so much.

You also probably don't get nearly as much sleep as you should. I cannot remember the last time I got more than, say, 7 hours of sleep on a school night (even 7 is a rarity). This is likely due to you unintentionally putting off all of your work too long, but it can also be due to all the thoughts racing through your mind. Last semester I studied abroad in Paris France, and I wouldn't change anything about this experience because it was incredible, but attending a graduate school and having more intense workloads put my stress/anxiety level at a crazy height and my regular bedtime most nights was 3 or 4 am...when 3 times a week I would have class at 9 am. Luckily over winter break and this semester I have done a lot better with that.

I also know studies have shown that people with mental illnesses have a great deal of difficulty getting to sleep at a decent time and getting enough sleep. Even if your body is exhausted (which for me is all the time), it's tough to shut off an anxious mind.

Many of these late nights you endure the majority of the time probably also involve lots of crying and panicking. I lost count long ago of how many breakdowns I've had at 3 am over essays I've had to write (and as an English major, I have to write a lot of essays). Even if now that I look back on some of them, they weren't even that stressful at all. Anxiety just makes you get so frustrated and paranoid over even the simplest of tasks.

The fact that you get easily overwhelmed isn't just limited to academics either. Social situations can likely cause a great deal of anxiety. For one thing, you probably never like to talk in your classes, so assignments that involve giving presentations will be the death of you. (I remember when my sister started going to the high school I went to she told me all of my former teachers that she had, when discovering she was related to me, told her "Oh yeah I remember your sister, she was always really quiet.") You can't help but constantly wonder if all of your friends are secretly bitching to each other behind your back about how they can't stand you, even when you rationally know this is very unlikely. If someone you care about, like a friend or relationship partner, isn't as outwardly expressive of their love for you as you are to them, your anxiety will tell you they don't really like you and they're simply putting up with you. No matter how many times you remind yourself that it may just not be in their character to be as emotionally expressive as you are.

Meeting/conversing with new people is no small feat. If you for any reason have to be roommates with random new people instead of your friends that you've already lived with, you'll be constantly extremely nervous about whether or not these new roommates hate you because they aren't already used to living with you like your friends are. You can be at a party and make conversation with someone you don't know and they may seem fine, but you'll walk away thinking, "Why the fuck did I just say that? They probably think I'm a huge idiot, I ruined any chances of being friends with them." (This is basically me after every attempt to speak with someone I don't know real well...and this is why I just don't go to parties generally.) This progression of thoughts will also occur after conversing with someone you have a crush on, even if you're good friends with that person.

Long story short, anxiety is not easy to deal with, therefore it does not make college easy to deal with. It's complicated because I am in a constant cycle of "I can't wait for this semester to be over" but at the same time... I never want to leave college. For us anxious people, it is always complicated.

But hey, if life wasn't complicated sometimes, it wouldn't be an adventure either.