There are few times in my life, all 20 years of it, that I have felt that things have gone in a direction I did not intend them to go. As intelligent as I seem, I am still naïve enough to believe that the things I plan will go as I intend them to.

See, for the longest time, I always knew I was going to go to college. No, I didn’t have the privilege of having parents or older siblings that would help me through the process of financial aid or choosing what state school to attend or even what I should major in, if anything, most of those big choices were done on my own—yes, I had their counsel, but it ultimately came down to me. I was a first generation student first and foremost, so nearly everything that was being talked about was really new to me in many respects. Which was to be expected since I would be the first in my family to go away from home for school.

I had the resources to help me though, school counselors like Katie Castillo, a good friend of mine, and even my AVID teacher(s)—you can never have one AVID teacher, let’s be real—guided me to those resources I didn’t even know existed for the most part. Folks like Katie, Beth, Rebecca (or BeckyG as I called her in secret), Denise, Layton and literally a trillion other people, made all the difference in the world as I was looking for ways to pay for school.

Now that I have been in school, I keep all of these people, including my parents and sister and family back at home in my mind whenever I have doubts about what I am doing. But lately I have to admit, things have gotten tougher and tougher and I just don’t know what to do or how I will be able to handle it anymore.

College is hard, this part is true. You get tested literally every day with how early you can get up, the amount of notes you have to take and the long hours spent in class sitting down listening to your professors talk with the occasional midterm and final thrown in. But what no one ever tells you about college is how much you come to learn about the persons you are going to be.

I have learned a lot about myself. I have come to realize that I have the potential to be a great teacher and mentor, to lead revolutions, to overpower systems of oppression and even wake up in time for 8:00am’s.

I also learned that I take on too much at once, and this has been a thing since high school. I have come to realize this and have done very little about it, but it is coincidentally the only thing that has been able to keep me sane for such a long time, because it was all I knew at a time in my life when everything was chaotic (that’s a story for later) and because of this, it has had a serious effect on my mental health.

Some of my closest friends know that for some time, I have grown restless here at Oregon State University. The underlying systems that constantly put people of color and underrepresented communities in situations where they can’t do anything without being labeled as “too sensitive” is too real. Micro-aggressions from professors and other colleagues is also something that has a deep and lasting effects on an individual. I have grown sick of this and it is something that I constantly get tired of addressing because it isn’t something that I should have to address almost every single day of my experience here or anywhere else I go.

I have grown tired of the same routine happening every day. Class, work, homework, sleep repeat. The same thing happening day in and day out and for what? A piece of paper that will just tell me that I have completed five years of school and can now go on for another two years just so I can start an entry level job?

I am not bashing on education or saying that it isn’t valuable. If anything, that is the only reason I am continuing to be here. But we all encounter those times where everything just turns to shit and comes crashing down on you and right now, that is where I am. Things in my life just aren’t going the way I thought they would. Every year something is changing and while I always welcome change in my life, constants would also be something nice to have for a while, right?

Sometimes it’s as if I am surrounded by everything that I have to do and all of my responsibilities and they are all calling my name, getting closer and closer demanding that I pay attention to them—fighting for every ounce of inner being I have left to deal with them.

I can’t breathe and it leaves me feeling stranded and isolated. Leaving me to cut myself off from the world and enter a hibernation that is counterproductive to not only my academics, professional and personal life, but to myself as a spiritual being connected to the world and to every single living being.

This is my question to you readers; what can I do to refresh myself? To reset my attitude and actually be happy to be where I am in my life and in school? What more can I do to ensure that I acknowledge that I am in such a privileged situation that some would die for?

Please reader, help me. Leave some insight into what I should do to get over this rut that I am in- share this in hopes that someone out there will know how to help me.

I appreciate you all for sending good thoughts my way.

I love you all.

-Angel.