I don’t know if it’s just me, or if the rest of the world has also become hyper-aware of their mental health during this current phase of quarantine, but either way: I’m into it. Not that I wasn’t already overly-conscious about my mental state at any given moment—ever since my somewhat bumpy transition to Notre Dame early last semester, I got a direct glimpse into what anxiety really looks like. With the help of a therapist and one of Notre Dame’s very own Care and Wellness consultants (sidenote: I HIGHLY recommend this hidden Notre Dame gem for any and all academic stress—with their miraculous magic wands of authority and ultimate power over even your advisor, they are the fairy godmothers of all things academic), I was able to sleep at night, actually relax, enjoy college and feel like myself again; and I feel so lucky to be in a place now that is so vastly different from where I was in the fall. Truly—whenever I think back to my first month of college (which isn’t often, because I don’t particularly like to relive some of those first few weeks), I don’t even recognize myself. Even though I would rather focus on where I am now, with friends and a life that I really love at Notre Dame, sometimes it’s helpful to remember how high my anxiety was back then and to remind myself of all the progress I’ve made. Even though my general anxiety now is nothing compared to what it once was, a new kind of anxiety has taken its place and emerged (unwelcomed!) into my life: academic anxiety. I’m not sure how it got here or how to free myself from it, but I desperately want to, and soon.
After my big reveal, my guidance counselor printed a huge stack of daily schedule templates and urged me to fill them out each afternoon so I could be more strict with myself about how much time I was spending on each assignment. For the next two years of middle school and the four years of high school following that, I was more or less able to stick to a well-balanced homework routine. That got harder junior and senior year of course, but my assignments never felt impossible; and while I did, of course, procrastinate (as all students do!), it was never to the degree of self-sabotage that I often feel it is now. Once I got to Notre Dame though, this all changed. The academics at Notre Dame are universally known and ranked for a reason—Notre Dame students are some of the most driven and intellectually-minded in the world, and it’s easy to see why. The very nature of common study spaces in college (this can range from places as large as the library to your dorm’s common area) gives us all the opportunity to see (and in my case, analyze and compare) the rigorous dedication of our peers to their studies.
When I got to Notre Dame this past fall, I didn’t lose the commitment to keeping a schedule that had been instilled in me in 6th grade; instead, I heightened it. I furiously scrawled my assignments for my new college classes into my planner each week until the assignments themselves were barely legible. On all-day Sunday homework grinds in the bookstore, I made a habit of scheduling my week of homework ahead until I became so overwhelmed with anxiety for the coming week that I couldn’t even focus on the assignment I had to finish for that day. There was simply not enough time in the day to do everything I both wanted and needed to do; and I blamed myself, convinced I was the only one struggling with feelings of guilt and shame every time I squandered nighttime study time by extending dinner with my friends to two hours instead of one or would scroll through Instagram for an extra 20 minutes than I needed to. Whenever I veered even slightly off schedule (which was often, if not every single day), I turned into my own worst enemy. My mind became a swirling pit of criticisms, fears and convictions of my own academic doom; and I rarely, if ever, was able to get myself on track again. However, the weird thing was that my paranoia wasn’t (and still isn’t) one of academic failure—like failing a test or getting a really low grade on a paper. I actually told myself during my first week of classes at Notre Dame that I didn’t care what my GPA was; as long as I was here at Notre Dame working hard and passing all of my classes, that was enough for me. I still feel that way—low grades on tests are disappointing, sure, but that’s not the main source of my academic anxiety. Instead, it’s the shameful feeling of knowing you didn’t do as much as you could have done on a certain assignment—knowing you didn’t work long enough or hard enough on something because you were lazy or careless. That feeling, I just can’t stand, so I do everything I can to avoid it, even if it means stressing myself out so much over a simple homework assignment that I later realize I got nothing out of it in the first place.
