University can be extremely hard on your mental health, especially if you already struggled with mental illness beforehand. Like Iâve shared before, my depression and anxiety hit an all-time high? low? I donât know which to call it but it got to the point I didnât think I was going to make it. I did make it, however, and here are the things I hope will help you avoid going through what I did. Of course, Iâm not a professional and I canât speak for everyone, so I want to emphasize that these are things that I personally struggled with and that this is advice I would have given to myself in these circumstances.
Incorporate organization into your life. If youâre already an organized person, keep with it. College is a ton of work and youâll have to keep track of a lot of things. I donât know about you, but personally, when I know I have a lot of tasks to finish but I canât remember how many or when theyâre due and everything is just on my desk in a messy pile, I get very overwhelmed to the point of feeling suffocated, then I shut down and do nothing. Have a planner, bullet journal, or app of some sort to keep track of all your assignments. Plan when youâre going to work on them. Break assignments down into smaller tasks to make them seem less intimidating. PAY ATTENTION TO DUE DATES. It can be very easy to get things confused and lose track of it all; you want to prevent this from happening.
Drill it into your mind that in college, NO ONE cares what you do. This is mainly addressing the social anxiety side of things, which I struggle with pretty badly. When I first arrived at university, I was excited that no one knew who I was; it was a completely fresh start. It only took a couple of weeks before I felt that everyone had formed some type of negative opinion about me. It got to the point where I felt so self conscious on the way to class that I wasnât even able to walk correctly without consciously thinking âokay, right foot, left footâ. Keep in mind that on a college campus, thereâs thousands of people, and none of them are paying attention to you. No one cares what you eat, what you wear, or if you trip. Take comfort in the fact that youâll probably never see these people more than once anyway. Everyone is just there to get a degree and do their own thing; as long as youâre a nice person, do what you want and try not to worry about what other people think of you.
Find a support system. University can be very lonely if you donât have anyone to talk to, or if the only people around you are people who donât understand what youâre going through and offer you unwarranted neurotypical advice like âdrink more waterâ and âjust think positiveâ. It really helps to have someone there who you can vent to about your problems and who can validate your experiences. All of my friends struggle with mental illness in some way like I do, so we can all understand each other and talk to each other about these things. Whether itâs your friends, your parents, or even people on the internet, having someone there to support you can make it feel like you arenât carrying the load all alone, because you are never alone, even when you feel like you are. (Of course, I do recommend seeking professional help for the long run and the bigger, more serious issues, this is just for your everyday, more general things)
Donât push yourself too hard. When you get to university, you may think of it as a continuation of high school in the sense of having to do a lot of things to distinguish yourself from others or to feel accomplished. You might want to join every club, take every class you can, make plans every night, and that is not a great idea. Only participate in extra-curriculars you actually have an interest in and genuinely enjoy; otherwise, youâre just wasting your time. I very highly recommend against taking the maximum number of credit hours youâre allowed to take, especially as a first-year, unless for some reason you absolutely have to. At Vandy, the limit is 18 hours/6 classes, and thatâs a lot. If you find that you have made too many commitments, you donât have to stick with them just because. The whole idea of ânever be a quitter, always finish what you startedâ can be very detrimental to your mental health. If you push yourself too hard, you could end up with a lot of anxiety that could come to a head in a breakdown which is never good. Drop a class or a club if you just donât have the time or energy to continue it anymore. Youâre not a quitter; youâre taking care of yourself, which is the most important thing you could ever do.Â
Sometimes you just need a break. Donât be afraid to take a mental health day every once in a while. If you were physically sick with the flu or a migraine, you wouldnât go to class, so why would you go to class if youâre a having a really bad depression episode or anxiety day? When your mental illness is flaring up, youâre not going to be productive anyway, so itâs not going to benefit you to force yourself to go to class. In my experience, and many of my friends experiences, professors can be understanding if you have some personal things going on. Just try to be honest with them, if you can, instead of just going AWOL with no explanation. When you have so much going on in addition to trying to keep your brain in check, bad days are inevitable. Itâll benefit you more to just ride it out and give yourself the time to recuperate than it would be to try to ignore and push through it, because then itâll just come back ten times harder. Somedays you wake up and just canât get out of bed. Take the day to focus on yourself so you can come through it better than before.
Please seek help when you need it, as soon as you need it. The mental health aspect of college is often avoided in the media as a topic of conversation. Vanderbilt proudly touts itâs second year winning the title of âHappiest Students in the Nationâ, which I and a lot of my fellow classmates think is bullshit, because it is. No one is happy all the time, and you canât measure happiness. Itâs dangerous to advertise this because it could deter a student struggling with depression to seek the help they need as they believe that no one else is going through the same thing and there is no one to help them. I can promise you that whatever youâre going through, there are a lot of other people going through it, too. University is unbelievably stressful and can do a number on even those who have previously never had a problem with their mental health. If you start to feel overwhelmed, I encourage you to seek out counseling or whatever type of resources your school has available to you. Even just talking to someone once can help you a lot. If you already see a therapist/psychiatrist, try to keep seeing them when you start school, and if youâre moving away to school, try to find someone new before you get there. I thought about going to the PCC for a long time, and people told me that I should, but I just kept putting it off until I reached an extreme low. I like to think that I never would have had to hit that low if I had sought out help as soon as I knew I needed it. It can be nerve-wracking, so try to find a friend who will go with you, or call on the phone first before going in person. Thereâs a lot going on in university, but your health always comes first, no question. You wonât be able to succeed academically in the long run if youâre not your best self.
Understand that university is not the end-all, be-all. One of the main symptoms of anxiety is catastrophic thinking; you always assume the worst is going to happen, and the smallest things feel apocalyptic in nature. During my entire second semester, when I was on academic probation with really low grades in my classes, it constantly felt like my world was ending. I mean I spent every second of every day worrying about flunking out of school, and I genuinely thought I was going to die. A strategy Iâve learned in therapy is to tackle these thoughts; my therapist would ask, âokay, so if you do fail this test, what is going to happen? if you do fail out of class, what is going to happen? are you going to get hurt? are you going to die?â and of course, the answer was no. It helped me a lot to realize that even if I did fail all my classes and fail out of school, what was the worst that could happen? I wouldnât die, my life wouldnât be over, I was going to be fine. Of course, getting kicked out of uni would suck, but ultimately, I would survive. Plenty of people leave uni or never go to uni, and they ended up okay. Since anxiety always brings up the worst case scenario, which to a uni student would be failing out of school, address that scenario and realize itâs not the end of everything. And once you realize that, and then realize that the worse case scenario is extremely unlikely, every other possibility suddenly seems less daunting. It takes a lot to get kicked out of school; one failing grade, even three semesters of probation wonât get you removed (at least not here). If you get a bad grade on an exam, or even fail a class, you donât have to automatically feel like your life is over. If your mental health causes you long-term struggles with school, your uni will work with you; see if you can take an approved underload (which is a number of credit hours less than the required minimum) or take a leave of absence. Neither of these things mean youâre a failure. Some people just have a different path than others. Maybe youâll realize that university just wasnât for you, and that is okay.Â
Mental health is a much bigger issue in university than it seems. Yes, your grades are important, but your well-being is infinitely more so. Please always remember to take care of yourself, keep things in perspective, and seek help when you need it. If you need advice or someone to lend an ear, my inbox is always open.Â
This was the last post idea I had lined up for this series, so if you have any topics you would like to see me give advice on, please please let me know! I did think about making a post of all my most embarrassing freshman year moments which I think could be hilarious, so I might do that. In the meantime, check out my previous university advice series posts if you havenât already!
Orientation Week/Move-In/First Day of Classes
