When You Don’t Know What You Want to Do With Your Life Yet
College has a remarkable way of asking people who recently needed permission to use the bathroom to explain their five-year plan. Uncertainty is…
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The Pressure to Make These the Best Years of Your Life
“Best years of your life” sounds cheerful until you are having a terrible Tuesday and wondering whether you are wasting an experience you…
Failing a Class Without Deciding You’re a Failure
A failing grade can have real consequences. It still does not contain enough information to tell you what kind of person you are.
When Productivity Becomes Self-Worth
Getting things done can feel good. Needing to get things done before you are allowed to feel good about yourself is a different…
The Mental Health Cost of Always Being Behind
When every task is late, every message needs an answer and every week begins with catching up, stress stops being an event and…
Perfectionism Loves a Syllabus
A syllabus can turn an entire semester into one long invitation to measure yourself. For perfectionists, every point starts feeling personal long before…
Imposter Syndrome Is Loudest in Rooms You Worked Hard to Enter
Getting into the program, lab, internship or classroom you wanted does not always make you feel qualified. Sometimes achievement just gives doubt a…
Everyone Looks Like They’re Handling College Better Than You
College makes success very public and struggle strangely private. It can look like everybody else received instructions you somehow missed. They did not.
Grief Doesn’t Pause for Midterms
College schedules keep moving after someone dies. Assignments still post, exams still happen and your roommate may be worrying about parking while your…
How to Ask a Professor for Help Before Everything Falls Apart
The ideal time to email a professor is before three missing assignments have become an archaeological site. You do not need to disclose…
Roommates Can Affect Your Mental Health More Than You Think
Your room is supposed to be where college stops for a minute. When the person sharing it makes the space tense, chaotic or…
The Friend Group You Started With Doesn’t Have to Be the One You Keep
The people who get you through your first weeks of college do not automatically have to become your permanent people. Sometimes friendship changes…
How to Tell When a Friendship Is Draining You
Friendships are not supposed to feel effortless all the time. But there is a difference between showing up through a hard season and…
You Are Not Your Roommate’s Therapist
Living six feet from someone can make you the first person to notice when they are struggling. It does not make you their…