Own Your Degree and Your Mental Health

Depression is a fickle thing. Becoming depressed is not easily predictable. The best days can be immediately followed by the worst. Still, there are behavior management patterns that can help mitigate its effects. For example, I know that I get very insecure if I use too much energy.   

Confused about emotions

The path that I am on now is long and twisted. At the beginning of this journey, I knew almost nothing about depression, nor did I believe that what I was feeling was depression. I felt like I was exaggerating my emotions or faking it. I didn’t want to believe the changes I was undergoing. Even though my family recognized it and I had a therapist, I still didn’t completely believe I was depressed. 

It’s common for depressed people to feel like they are either tricking everyone into thinking they have depression or finding some other way of feeling like an imposter. 

My depression made me feel like I was ripped from society and I had to fight.

Fight to connect. 

Fight to connect with myself. 

Fight to connect with myself in bits. 

An effort made, even a little—

Strand by strand, I’m pulling myself back.

Support systems

I was privileged enough that my depression was not ignored by those around me, and they shared what they noticed. I was lucky enough to get a good therapist on my first try. This luck was due to the fact that my therapist was found as a result of my parents’ effort. My therapist was lovely. She helped me work through things I was hiding while I invalidated myself. 

I was very anxious in the months before university. My therapist was great at helping me through my anxieties and making plans with me to make the transition to campus easier.   

The things that worried me about school were the academic workload and the fact that I would have to be more independent than I had ever been before. University was in a  different city, away from the one I had lived in my entire childhood. I was anxious. Though a meal plan solved the problem of setting aside time to cook, I needed to budget my time and energy like never before. My first year at university was made easier thanks to the support systems I had, like my therapist and loved ones. 

My new and old friends were key to making my first year a good one. My old friends made me feel supported. My new friends made me feel welcome. Having a community was important, and being a part of one allowed me to grow during my first year. 

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My two biggest roadblocks when it comes to succeeding academically are motivation and depressive episodes. Because of this, academic accommodations were another boon that helped me succeed during my first year of university. The school administrators understood that I needed some extra help. I am able to take my tests and exams in a different building than other students so I am not distracted. I also get extra time to finish my papers. Additionally, I get extensions when turning in assignments and can miss a few classes without repercussions. These accommodations take pressure off me to perform my best when I’m at my lowest. 

Boosting myself

Self-motivation is something I’ve struggled with for years. Being unmotivated is definitely a difficult mindset to have. There is no one solution for overcoming it. It’s also not something that I can just force myself through. 

There are a few things that I do to fight the absence of productivity that comes with a lack of motivation: I sit with other people as they do their work, I put on timers to count down the time I have left to work, and I have my accommodations. Often, I have to ask for help.

Learning to ask for help has been hard but at the same time, very rewarding. When I ask for help, I almost always receive it. But asking for help also requires vulnerability, something that is not easy to confront. Part of the process of trusting others is to trust them enough to let them in. Getting to be that much closer to those around me was amazing, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

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Sometimes it’s a matter of time before my depression gets in the way of my productivity. Sometimes nothing works and I have to wait until the depressive wave ebbs. Sometimes it feels like there is an elephant on my chest and the effort to get its weight off is not worth making. 

When these moments happen, I need to remember that it will leave if I don’t let it push me deeper into the ground.

Depressive episodes pass. 

Assignments get done. 

Time keeps ticking and everything keeps moving on. 

Every university experience is different, but I think every student needs to be patient with themselves because we are all growing. A degree may not be everything, but mental health is. Approaching difficult tasks may be scary, but there are many ways to handle the hard things in life. 

I can be depressed and in university. You can struggle and find the parts of life that are worth living for.  

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