I feel sick

I feel kind of sick. I don’t mean to make this week about my mental health, but I’m not taking care of myself, and I have to recognize the things I’m doing wrong right now to make better choices later.

I feel overwhelmed. I don’t feel like myself. I can’t sleep well, I eat maybe one meal a day. When I do go to Pierce, I only get junk food: pizza or ice cream. I forget to go to the bathroom, I have trouble concentrating – even when I manage to get away from other people. I’m distracted by by my own thoughts. Midterms are over, but I feel worse. When I opened those tests, I realized how much I didn’t know. I expected it. I looked over the chapter summaries, but failed to absorb any of the words on the page. I didn’t understand what my notes from class meant, so I just told myself studying was a lost cause and just went to sleep the night before. My resulting grades were incredible, in a bad way.

It’s the first time I’m feeling so lost in school. I used to easily ask friends for help on assignments or concepts I didn’t understand. I even went to teachers before class if I didn’t get what they taught the day before. Back then, my biggest issue was overcoming the fear of asking people for help, and being shy. But right now, I’m facing a different issue. I think it’s having too much pride.

When someone else asks me for help, I like helping them. I like knowing the answer, I like being resourceful, and I take pleasure in knowing information other people don’t. But when I’m in the reverse situation, when I’m lost, it’s difficult for me to admit that I am.

In certain classes, I feel like I don’t know what I don’t understand. My understanding of what goes on in class is so small that I can’t even identify the concepts I have issues with. It’s difficult for me to stay focused during lectures. I manage to complete homework assignments (which save my grade) with formulas and internet tutorials, but I never quite understand what anything means, and then do poorly when it comes time for a quiz.

I feel like to get good grades here, it completely depends on what you’ve been exposed to in high school. If you never took Calculus before, or have never coded before, you have no idea what’s going on. The pace is fast, the homeworks are different than what’s taught in lecture, or what will be on the test. Professors teach assuming you have some background knowledge of science and math, but what if you don’t have any? It makes me wonder how I even got accepted into this school without certain classes on my transcript.



Is this just what it means to be a freshman? I don’t know. I don’t like this version of myself. I don’t like how unorganized I am, how much I don’t know, how much I can’t do. Thankfully, I have truly supportive friends that are going through all of it with me. Friends that keep me on schedule, make me eat meals. I don’t know what they see in me; their lives seem more on track than mine. They don’t know the person I am, but have some kind of faith and still want to invest in my friendship. I’m really thankful. For them, those who won’t let me feel lonely, I need to pull myself together.