It’s about you
By Alondra Garcia
Originally published 10/26/17
Classes, homework, internship, work out, eat, sleep and finally repeat. We college students are typically running through these cycles of endless work, deadlines and events. We’re running around between here and there so often that being present almost feels impossible.
Present as in enjoying the moment, or hating the moment, present as in having a reaction to where you are and what you’re doing. As opposed to not having enough time to react to the events you’re attending. This feeling of having no emotion is a response to a rapid, chaotic lifestyle that often leads to anxiety and depression.
With lives like ours, it’s easy to have your mood swing from high to low. A high of working hard in the library and handing in your best work at your internship. A high means pushing yourself harder and harder and still succeeding left and right. One can only keep this up for so long before a crash hits.
A low, a long and hard low of curling up in bed for a day or two maybe three days. This time you spend watching reruns of ‘Friends’ and hiding from any form of responsibility. This time of missing class and ditching important events is unhealthy.
These highs and these lows are always at extremes and sometimes, we students, find it hard to accept that it’s not healthy. To us, this is college, but to the world, it’s a problem, a very large problem.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness states that 75 percent of mental health conditions begin before you reach 24. Making college such a crucial time to take care of ourselves; so that we do not fall into common mental disorders like anxiety and depression.
Things as simple as sleeping, eating and diet are factors that we need to learn to deal with. By taking care of these simple factors we can do a better job of keeping up with our pace of life.
You know, they say science majors are the most malnutritioned. This is because in the classroom it doesn’t matter what our mental state is. What matters is that we keep up with the pre-labs, the post-labs, the practicals, the exams and the endless information we need to absorb.
We students, we have to keep up with professors who all believe their class is most important, even though they all are. Even though we need to keep our GPA’s high, it’s important to remember that we are what’s most important.
According to the National Association of Mental Illness, one in five college students have mental health conditions. Most of my classrooms are composed of 20–30 students, meaning in every classroom there are 4–5 students that are dealing with some sort of mental distress/condition.
You may not realize that you need to speak to someone, and you may not realize that you need to spend a little extra time to create balance. That’s normal, we’re all set in a specific mindset, we’re all set in patterns that help us through the semesters. But, if it ever gets too chaotic, if your high ever drags out too long, so long that when your low hits it feels like an attack instead of rest, consider speaking to someone.
Most importantly, consider speaking to someone before you reach another set of extremes. Sometimes the main issue is deciding when to drag yourself to the counselor’s office. Compulsive shopping, extreme exercise, internet addiction, prescription drug misuse, sex and substance abuse should all be taken as hints.
Our actions during and post lows and highs tell us a lot about the way we chose to cope with our hectic lifestyles. Sometimes we use those actions as our excuse but the moment you sense it’s wrong, the moment you sense it might be more take it as a hint. A hint that will hopefully lead those of you who are struggling to a counselor’s office.
