I vividly remember the night before my first day of college. It was the one night out of the summer I let myself stay awake until 3 a.m., blaring Drake in the background as I completed a painting I wanted to hang in my dorm. My new college dorm. The place that would witness me making friends, accomplishing great things, and allowing myself to use my newfound freedom to its fullest potential.
A wide-eyed and optimistic soul, I rolled into orientation proudly sporting Rice gear. After pursuing the best grades, wooing my teachers into writing the best recommendations, and filling my applications to the brim with achievements, I was confident my track record would continue. At orientation, Rice opened its wealth of opportunity to me. I loved my college and the people in it. As I waltzed through the Sallyport on matriculation night, I was more than certain that the next four years would be the best years of my life.
But as the new semester unfolded, what seemed like a utopia morphed into a place of fear and resentment. There was a monster looming over me, chanting “You aren’t good enough, Rice made a mistake with you.” I was overwhelmed by the amount of talent Rice students had come in with, the rigor of the classes, and the amount of activities on campus. I remember breaking down one night while perusing the Facebook pages of my peers. How was I supposed to compete with the National Secretary of PETA and an entrepreneur with their own start-up? I was drowning in my classwork and anxiously trying to “adultify” my high school resume while avoiding FOMO at college parties. In other words, while college had caught up to me, I still wasn’t mentally caught up with college. Like the grandma in the LifeAlert commercial, I couldn’t get up. I was always tired, always working; yet my effort didn’t match the less-than-stellar grades I was receiving. While some of my peers had research labs already lined up for the next semester, I was still forgetting the “+ C” while integrating functions.
I soon created a black hole of negativity inside of me, blaming myself for small day-to-day errors while trying to maintain a façade of positivity. I frequently experienced episodes of depression and anxiety. I finished assignments purely for the sake of finishing and I wasn’t motivated to learn. Worst of all, I assumed that no one else was feeling the same way I was.
And that was where my biggest mistake lay. After a particularly brutal series of midterms, I was at my breaking point. But instead of allowing myself to succumb to the cycle of feeling stressed and then panicking about said stress, I began to reflect. What was the root cause of all of my negativity? Do other people feel the same? How could I even begin to heal myself of my toxic mindset? I vented to friends, family, upperclassmen, counselors, literally anyone who had ears to listen and a heart to care. And surprisingly, a lot of my peers felt the same way. We were all trapped inside of our own little bubbles trying to overachieve just as we did in high school.
Slowly but surely, I figured out the piece in my life that I was missing: failing to cherish the now. I failed to take a moment to appreciate the gifts in my life that usually went unnoticed, like the many friends that waved when I walked past and that worked and struggled alongside me. This was the turning point. I opened myself up and created new meaningful relationships. I joined organizations that I truly felt passionate about. I stopped worrying about competing with others, and refused to feel anything less than worthy of my place at Rice. While I still experienced depressive episodes, I now knew to handle them by sharing my feelings with others and examining the roots of my moods. Not surprisingly, I finished off the year with better grades and a fresh new mindset.
Oh, and that painting I finished? It was a beautiful mandala design with light and dark colors interspersed, reminding me of the positivity that can be found even in dark days. By allowing myself to cherish the little things in life, I was able to finally create that utopia that I wanted my college experience to be.