Dear All College Students With Acne,
When I was in high school, I thought that college was some magical place where all of the awkward marks of puberty would just disappear. I had struggled with acne since middle school, but found my face to be relatively stable by my senior year of high school. I was ready to enter college, and imagined myself with a completely clear face, straight out of those Proactiv commercials.
Seemingly out of nowhere, during the first few weeks of my sophomore year, my face blew up like a balloon. I had never had acne this bad before. The entirety of my face was covered with bumps tender to the touch, and when I tried to pop or squeeze them, they would bleed profusely. Gross, right? It got to the point where I wasn’t confident to even step outside my room without layers of foundation and cover-up caked onto me. This is called cystic acne, and it can pop up without warning and last for a long time without proper treatment.
So, yes, I understand what you all are going through. More than a year later, my face feels stable again, but I am still physically and emotionally scarred by what occurred during my sophomore year. Through my acne experience, I have learned some things that I want to tell you all know, so that surviving acne in college can get a little easier.
1. Do not be fooled: acne is not just a teenager’s ailment. If you break out in college, it does not make you weird or broken. Many people in their twenties suffer from acne. It is not just caused by hormones or eating too many potato chips or forgetting to wash your face in the morning.
2. Do not be ashamed if you feel like you have to wear makeup to be confident. Before I developed cystic acne, even the slightest bit of makeup was saved for special occasions, and I felt as if I was discrediting myself by wearing a large amount of it on a daily basis. But this way of thinking needed to stop for me to accept the fact that I was struggling with my acne.
3. That being said, do not feel as if you have to cover up your acne if you don’t want to. Your face is your face. If other people don’t like your acne, that’s their problem. Wear makeup only for yourself.
4. Do not think that there is one “cure-all” for acne. I purposefully did not name the medicines and creams that I use to treat my face. Everybody’s skin is different, and what works for me may have adverse effects on you. If you try a “miracle” pill or cream and find that it doesn’t work, try not to get too upset. It takes a lot of trial and error to find the right regimen for your specific skin problems.
5. Finally, do not get discouraged if you break out again after a while. You might develop a tolerance to your medicine. Yes, it’s extremely frustrating to see spots covering your face after months without them, but they will fade in time.
Nobody likes having acne, especially in college, where we are all supposed to have grown out of it. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that a lot more college-aged students suffer from chronic acne than I had originally thought. If you’re suffering from acne, the most important thing to know is that you’re not alone.
Love, Jessica
Editor’s Note: We want to say a huge thank you to Her Campus National and Proactiv for sending us a sample kit of Proactiv in our Finals Survival Kit! It will come in handy this time of year, when we are all so stressed.
Imge Credit: WebMD