As a first-time freshman, I can wholeheartedly say that being a freshman is hard. Although it has only been one semester, college has already gotten the best of me.
In high school, I was used to my consistent seven-hour school days, with maybe a few after-school activities every so often. Then, I would go home to complete my homework, and just like that, my day was over. This was my life for four years straight. Everything was routine for me and I never strayed from it once.
Then in August of 2024, I started my first semester of college. At the time, I was just a girl who was majoring in Interior Design, filled with much eagerness and joy in starting my new phase of life.
However, after the first week, these emotions quickly became replaced with anxiety and stress.
My routine was quickly destroyed when I realized my first class wouldn’t be until one that afternoon. This undoubtedly threw me off completely. I had nothing to do until the late day and so, therefore, that is what I did. Nothing. This became extremely difficult for me to adjust to, causing me to fall behind in a lot of work.
As a design major, I can safely say that they don’t go easy on you. In high school, my teachers were so prominent about making sure you didn’t fail. Honestly, you had to try harder to fail a class than to pass it. So when put into classes where their goal was to weed you out, adapting became very difficult for me.
With these factors being put into place, freshman year became extremely strenuous. I would say before that, I never had major struggles when it came to my mental health. Of course, there was a test now and then that I would stress over, but it was nothing like what I experienced this past semester.
Unfortunately, when entering college, there are many things you have to learn for yourself, even if it means failing at first. Which, I must say, was an extremely hard concept for me to follow. From trying to keep up with my design projects to making time for friends and studying for exams, my life felt filled to the brim.
I had never experienced such an overwhelming feeling before. I was sleeping less, skipping meals and isolating myself from those around me.
It wasn’t until I started to feel a numbness that I realized I was struggling with my mental health.
I was filled with anxiety, fear, worry and even self-hate. Constantly, I felt like a complete failure and struggled to find a way to climb myself out of this hole.
Though I had never really struggled with mental health before, coming to college opened my mind up to so many new emotions.
Day and day again, my mind consumed itself with obsessive negative thoughts that would surround me nonstop.
To constrain my mindset, I would just make myself busier. It seemed like a good idea at the time–forcing myself to do more work so I wouldn’t have to think about all my work, yeah not my best solution, I will say. Until one day I had about 10 minutes to myself, stuck in silence with my thoughts.
I remember sitting down in a chair and just letting myself think in silence. I felt my heartbeat chase and my chest ache. The more I thought, the more fear I felt. The more fear I felt, the harder it was for me to breathe. I was having an anxiety attack, and I didn’t even know it. After a few minutes, I was finally able to catch my breath again and process what was happening. It was then I realized that my mental health wasn’t the best.
For me, it took the act of confiding in friends and deep prayer to finally feel okay. Though not everyone is religious I do think having some form of support is essential to conquering mental illness.
No one says this, but the transition from high school to college is, simply put, hard. And that is okay. You don’t have to pass your classes with flying colors. You don’t need to be at every event held. It’s going to take effort to balance school and life and changes will need to be made. Nonetheless, college is a learning process and it takes a community to help guide you through that.
It’s vital to note that you’re going to feel these emotions, but it’s even more important that you don’t let these emotions consume your well-being. I would not say I feel complete peace, but I will say that I can safely acknowledge when I start to dwell on these feelings. It’s an ongoing battle that you must face but we don’t have to face it alone and that’s the beauty of this whole thing.
As freshmen, this is all new to us. But we can overcome our circumstances and persevere. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.