Just kidding—I barely handled it.
If there’s one college tradition that no one talks about enough, it’s the first or second week sickness. You know the one. The kind that sneaks up on you right when you’re trying to start the semester strong, juggle new classes, and maybe even make it look like you have your life together. Mine hit me like a freight train, and (spoiler alert), urgent care was basically my second home.
It started small, just a headache here, some body aches there. Then suddenly I was throwing up, feverish, and convinced that maybe sleep would fix it. But no matter how many hours I spent in bed, I kept feeling worse. I dragged myself to urgent care more times than I’d like to admit, hoping for some magical cure. Instead, I got the same line over and over: “It’s a viral infection.” Which basically translates to “we can’t do much, good luck out there.”
The last time I went to urgent care was the day I felt my absolute worst. I left with the same vague reassurance, but when I got home, my symptoms multiplied by what felt like a hundred. It was the kind of exhaustion that no amount of tea or rest could touch. Every day after that blurred together into a cycle of trying to keep up with schoolwork, forcing myself to eat something when I could, and wondering how long it would take before I finally felt like a human again. At one point, I realized I had spent more energy stressing about missing classes than actually letting myself rest. It was a classic example of how college life sometimes pushes us to power through when what we really need is to pause.
Now that I’m finally recovering, I feel like I’m slowly coming back to life. I can breathe easier, I can stand without feeling dizzy, and food finally tastes like food again. Still, I’m crossing my fingers and sending up a prayer that this never happens to me again—because once was definitely more than enough.
The first week sickness is miserable, but it is also strangely universal. At the very least, it gave me a story to share and a reminder that even when life feels like it is falling apart, we still find a way to get through it.