Struggling to cope? Don’t worry your not alone

Students day in and day out we are faced with countless stresses that we often have never encountered before some times these build up and we find our well-being challenged. Have you ever felt as though university is too much and considered dropping out? Well this blog serves to let you know you are not alone in this struggle and that there are reasons for it and that there are ways to conquer it.

You often find in today’s society that mental well-being is a topic not discussed and actively avoided as topics of conversations. Which is strange considering its prevalence in society. There are reasons for the avoidance of the topic of mental well-being is that there is a fear of insulting sufferers of mental illness and a lack of understanding of mental health (which is actually another name for mental well-being) an understanding which is not being advanced since there is a general avoidance of the topic.

You often find that there are so many misconceptions when it comes to mental health/mental well-being so that begs the question what is mental health? Well according to the world health organisation “Mental health is defined as a state of well-being in which every individual realises his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully”. Confusing I know it means that while mental health does span conditions like anxiety to suicidal thoughts and everything in-between it means more it refers to people being able to cope with the issues they face in life, and students face more of these issues often with less experience.

For most going to university is a very big change. In the space of 3 months’ most students have to go from worrying about deadlines exams and traveling from home to college Monday to Friday, to having to cope with; traveling from accommodation to university (commonly in a new city) and often at different times each day, learning your campus, making new friends, budgeting, buying food and supplies, cooking, cleaning, working and going out, on top of doing the hardest education you’ve ever done. The reasons why many students struggle to cope with the change are numerous. Unlike with College the education style is different you have to do more on your own time you have to make time for independent study around the massive to-do list university students have.

Another reason is that there are so many things that we are not taught how to deal with. Over our academic lives we are taught how to read and write in English, we are taught how to find angles in math we are taught how to start (or rather not start) a family in sex education, we are even given information on how much we are paid in our student loans and how we will pay it back. However, not all of us are taught how to budget correctly, to shop frugally, to cook balanced meals or how to find suitable jobs when our loans are not enough or even organise or time effectively.

For me before university organising my time meant working how much time it would take to complete an assignment, then suddenly having to fit shopping cooking cleaning and everything else around my lectures and at first I was really struggling to cope even into my second semester I was able to fit everything in but I was finding myself stressed about coping with everything I was getting little sleep, struggling with the assignments I had, I was not socialising I found myself getting upset and even when I did go to bed I couldn’t sleep more than once I considered dropping out, I needed to find a release. For me  I had several releases one was watching jacksepticeye YouTube videos something which made me laugh and forget about everything.

My main release was my friends they shared my struggles I got advice on how to cope, one of my flat mates and one of my closest friends Will told me that if I went to bed early and was refreshed the next day I would be more productive and he was right that day I had achieved more than in the preivious week this made me less stressed about my course. More importantly my friends gave me someone to tell how I felt if I was upset or felt down these people picked me up they understood. After I confided in my friends everything fell into place I felt as though I could cope.

Now if you have read this far thank you the point I am trying to make is that no matter how hard life seems there is always a way to overcome it. Do not bottle up your feelings and issues there is always someone who will listen and help. No matter how hard you find it to cope now don’t let that stress that worry control your life talk to someone weather that be  your parents, friends, family, lectures many universities have counseling and advice services that are great if you need to talk to some one.