I Failed 3A And It Was Okay

EngSoc's MHA Team
Nov 3 · 5 min read

Content warning: This article contains touches on suicide, anxiety, and depression so please read and share cautiously.

This is an story featuring a student reflecting on his experiences, including failing a school term. New stories will be posted every 1–2 weeks! If you would like to share your story or are in need of mental health resources, please check out the resources at the bottom.

I’m Andrew. I’m in 3B Mech and I have anxiety and depression.

The first step for me was learning about my mental health disorders and getting diagnosed. That didn’t happen until 3rd year. It was really hard for me to admit to myself. That’s one of the biggest challenges that I’ve gone through. I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety and mild depression. I don’t think that diagnosis was accurate; I probably have intermediate depression. It gets bad some days.

It took me awhile to internalize the fact that I have it. I would go through periods of going to therapy and working on myself and just trying to figure things out. Everything would be good, I would be in a good place. Then I would forget about mental health, and spiral back into anxiety and depression. It happened a few times, and then I realized I have to keep doing this. This is going to stick with me for the rest of my life. Some people do get better with mental health disorders, but anxiety and depression can stay with you for life. And that sucks to hear. But it doesn’t have to suck and I’ve been trying to make it suck less. Knowing that I have anxiety and depression is making it suck a lot less, because I can deal with it and not just be a victim to it.

There were two big events that really made me realize that I needed to change things up. I failed 3A, which was spectacularly explosive in every way. Everything fell apart. There were a lot of reasons why I failed.

I didn’t have any goals. I told myself that I was going to enjoy life. I had done a few semesters, I had done a few co-ops, and I said “Real life sucks. Adult life sucks. I don’t want to work a full time job or have responsibilities ’cause that sounds boring and garbage. So I am going to have fun and have a party life in university.” And it was awesome, until it wasn’t. Until 3A came. I barely passed 2B. So I didn’t have math under my belt or thermodynamics. I was essentially learning those from scratch in 3A.

I started dating this person and they were very like-minded at the time. They were not academically focused. They just wanted to drink and smoke weed all the time. Whenever I got stressed about school, they would be like “it doesn’t matter, fuck school, it doesn’t matter when you’re dead anyway”. That kind of weird existential stuff, that is not good for you when you’re trying to study in 3A. I stayed with them until midterms. The reason it was bad was because they also had mental health issues that were arguably worse than mine. I didn’t know how to set boundaries because I had never been in a relationship where I had to. They attempted suicide and I didn’t know how to deal with that. I completely broke apart as a person. And after that, I was pretty shaken up and my courses were way beyond me. It was too late to catch up at that point.

After that all happened, I talked to the Engineering Society president and they gave me support in trying to petition. And I decided not to petition. I maybe could have made it through, but I decided not to because I wanted to learn from my mistakes. I’m really glad I did, because the second time through 3A was really easy. Not because I had previous experience with the courses. Not because I learned anything the previous term. But I had the right mindset. I had goals in mind of more than just the next 2 weeks. I was academically focused for the right reasons. And I was hanging out with people who wanted to do well. I made friends with the other people who failed 3A, and we all started working together and were all motivated by the same thing. Hanging with the right people can really make a difference, and setting goals for yourself to be where you want to be.

Another thing about me is I have aphantasia. It’s a lack of imagination. I have no way to visualize in my head or audiate sounds. If you try and think of an apple in your head, you can probably think of the colour and rotate in your head. I can’t. I don’t have images to recall or faces of people I know. I think it affects my memory. Most people use visual cues or sound to remember things. My brain doesn’t work the way everyone else’s brain does. If a professor asked us to visualize something in class, I couldn’t really do it. Again, learning about it is helping me counteract the negative aspects.There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s not really related to mental health, but it’s another way someone can be neurodivergent. It’s just another way someone can be different.

What do you think were the biggest things you learned through that?

I spent a lot of time reflecting and just struggling. I can’t put it into words. It was a lot of trial and error. After I failed I spiraled a few more times. I started doing CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) doing 3A the first time around. But it was so crazy, I didn’t have time to practice it. I decided to start taking therapy more seriously. I started practicing CBT, noticing things about my thoughts and moods, and focus on how I felt at the time and what I was thinking. I downloaded an app called Youper to track my moods and my thoughts.

I was on SSRI’s for one semester. That’s another reason why 3A was so fucked up the first time. I wanted to fix myself. It made me feel like a robot. I couldn’t sleep, my insomnia was worse, and to fix that I took sleeping drugs. And when that didn’t work, I took Ambien. That was a bad cocktail of things. If you see a psychiatrist they’ll prescribe you something and it works for some people. But don’t be dumb like me and stop taking them during the middle of exams.

I started playing music again. When you’re so focused on school you forget to escape sometimes. At least for me, it’s a big part of my life so having it back was really normalizing.

And I started longboarding, which sounds really dumb. But you have to be really focused all the time and balance, and it’s a good way to spend an hour thinking about things. I practiced controlling my thoughts as I was boarding. I would try to get into a flow state. A flow state is when you’re completely focused on a physical activity, uninterrupted by thoughts. Your motion, your balance, your breathing. It’s like physical meditation. I tried meditating, but I couldn’t get into it. It’s not for everyone. Boarding is my way of meditating.

Thank you for sharing Andrew! If you would like to share your story on the blog (anonymous or not), email mhablog@engsoc.uwaterloo.ca and we’ll get in touch! If you need any mental health resources, a great place to start is the EngSoc website ( https://www.engsoc.uwaterloo.ca/resources/mental-health/) or the Campus Wellness website ( https://uwaterloo.ca/campus-wellness/).

Written by

The University of Waterloo EngSoc’s Mental Health Awareness team.

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