My Experience:

            Entering sophomore year, there were a few things that I wanted to keep the same, and a lot of things that I wanted to change. I had been a decent student throughout my freshman year, and I wanted to make sure that I kept that up. I had also developed some pretty close relationships that I wanted to maintain. These were really the only two things that I wanted to keep the same, as my attitude towards everything else took a pretty dramatic shift during the summer between freshman and sophomore year. Still, before explaining what specific things I am referring to, I think it is important to first discuss what factors contributed to my shift in attitude in the first place so that the reader may understand where these changes were actually coming from.

            There were two things that contributed to my shift in attitude: the struggles I was having during my first semester as a freshman, and the economic/societal shut-down that occurred due to the outbreak of COVID-19.

            In regard to the former, a piece of me felt largely discouraged by my inability to feel comfortable with myself despite the large priority I had been placing on productivity. On top of this, I was still feeling lost and confused in relation to who I was and what I wanted to do. Because of these two things, I thought it was only natural that I had to adopt a new view on life in order to try and feel better – both about myself and about my choice of career/future.

            In regard to the latter, being stuck at home for the majority of the day and having to take online classes during my second semester as a freshman was frustrating. Because my sophomore year promised to be more of the same, I felt as though I had to try and find a way to make taking online courses much more enjoyable.

            The combination of trying to make online courses more digestible and trying to find a new approach to life contributed to two important conclusions. These conclusions would have a relatively large impact on my sophomore year, as they were the main catalyst for the changes that I alluded to at the beginning of this entry.

            My first conclusion related to both the problem I was having with feeling lost along with the problem I was having with online coursework. Since freshman year didn’t help me get any closer to figuring out what sorts of things I wanted to study, I felt as though I wanted to use my sophomore year to explore as many options as possible. I also wanted to make the prospect of taking online courses more intriguing, aiming to find a way to make me excited to log in to my courses. I concluded that the best way to accomplish both of these would be to sign up only for courses that I found interesting, regardless of what topic/major they related to. I was hoping this would give me a better idea of what sort of career I might like in the future. I also felt this would make taking online courses more fun, since I was at least learning about things I wanted to learn.

            My second conclusion pertained to this idea of productivity and how my focus would shift around it. Essentially, since I felt that my pursuit of consistent productivity did not result in me feeling comfortable with myself during my freshman year, I concluded that the better approach may be the exact opposite. I decided to focus only on accomplishing the things I needed to accomplish – which, in my case, was just my course work – and use the rest of my time to do whatever I wanted to do even if it wasn’t productive. The logic behind this came from the fact that I felt one of the biggest contributors to my discomfort was the stress I had when I was unable to accomplish the extra tasks I had set out for myself. For me, if I could do away with some of that stress, I thought it could lead to an overall happier life.

            Thus, the two main changes I made entering my sophomore year were: I was going to learn about the things I wanted to learn about by enrolling only in classes I found interesting, and I was going to focus only on getting my coursework done while using the rest of my time to enjoy myself and live a happier life.

            There actually was one other change that I made entering my sophomore year, and that pertained to where I was going to live. At that time, there was a lot of uncertainty pertaining to how long the pandemic and all its ramifications were going to last. Because of this, a lot of the courses that I was signing up for sophomore year were flirting with the idea that they were going to be taught using a hybrid format (as in, you could choose to attend the class either in-person or online). Me and my parents debated for a long time whether or not it would be worthwhile to live on campus in order to potentially take advantage of this possibility. In the end, we decided that it would be best to get me an apartment in Houston, both in the hopes of eventually attending in-person lectures but also to help me feel as though things weren’t too different from the typical college experience.

            Now that I’ve explained what I wanted to keep the same and what I wanted to change entering my second year at the university, I can now start talking about my actual experience as a sophomore.  

            When it comes to my coursework – staying consistent with the first conclusion I made – I decided to enroll in the following six courses: Introduction to Programming, Nations and Imaginations, Russian History, Principles of Data and Society, Calculus II, and Class Piano. I felt as though this selection would allow me to explore a relatively broad and varied set of topics, while also allowing me to delve into a few subjects I found interesting (in retrospect, I have no idea how I explained virtually any of these selections to my parents).

            In regard to my living situation, my parents ended up getting me a single bedroom apartment that was about a 10-minute walk to campus. This was the first time I was ever going to be living alone, and it was also the first time I would be living in an apartment. This meant that I was entirely responsible for the apartment’s maintenance – I had a bigger space that I had to clean, I had a kitchen that I felt I should use, and a living room I thought I should decorate. Still, this also meant that I got my own space to relax and utilize whenever things were feeling too stressful. This was something I came to heavily appreciate, somewhat during my sophomore year, but especially during my junior and senior years.

            Moving past my living situation, one of the biggest things I thought I would have to get used to when I was first entering my sophomore year was all the changes that occurred to campus life. The University of Houston (UH) felt deserted. There was hardly anybody walking around campus; the cafeteria was open, but it only gave food to-go; the gym and library were open, but there were strict policies related to wearing masks, sanitizing the areas you used, how far apart you could sit from anybody, and so on; clubs and organizations were still a thing, but they met strictly online; etc. It was apocalyptic, in a way.

            However, in retrospect, the changes to campus life weren’t all that big-a-deal, particularly because of how lucky I got in terms of my social life. Fortunately for me, my friend Ben lived in Houston. This meant that, even though things were shut down, I still had somebody that I could hang out with on a relatively consistent basis. Even though campus felt like a wasteland, it was at least comforting to know that I didn’t have to do things completely alone.  

            Thus, to recap, the general landscape I was dealing with entering my first semester as a sophomore was: I was taking six online courses on topics I felt were interesting (even though they all considered the possibility of a hybrid format, they ended up being fully online), I was living in an apartment by myself for the first time in my life, campus life was essentially non-existent, and I still had a good friend that I could hang out with on a consistent basis.

            In all honesty, the first 2-3 months dealing with this landscape were pretty easy. Staying consistent with my second conclusion, I spent most of my time attending my online courses, working on homework assignments, and using my free time to do things like play videogames, watch YouTube videos, or hang out with my friend. Time sort of flew by, and there wasn’t anything that felt really significant about any of those weeks.

            Still, even though I didn’t realize it at the time, there were a few things that had begun unfolding around me during this time period that would serve as the precursor to a crisis I would have during my second semester. Specifically, there were three things that begun to happen that would eventually come to define my sophomore year.

            The first thing related to my courses. Essentially, I disliked four of the classes that I was taking. Two of my classes – Calculus II & Introduction to Programming – were both difficult and tedious. And the other two courses – Nations and Imaginations & Principles of Data and Society – felt esoteric and not very practical. Attending online lectures for any of these four became more and more difficult as days got on. Consequentially, focusing on the material and preparing for the courses also became difficult, and I felt like I was falling further and further behind as the semester went on. This created a sort of cycle in which: I didn’t like attending online lectures for these courses so I would just skip/not pay attention, skipping/not paying attention led to me falling behind in the material, the more I fell behind the less I understood what I was learning, the less I understood the more I disliked the course, and the more I disliked the course the less I would go to class.

            The second thing that happened was that I wasn’t paying enough attention to keeping either myself or my own personal space in good condition. My apartment was a mess, as I very rarely cleaned. I also never bothered to decorate the space or make it seem like a spot I could call home. I was incredibly unhealthy, both in terms of diet and exercise. I didn’t know how to cook, so fast food was the name of the game in terms of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And even though I played basketball from time to time, I spent way more time inside of my apartment, and I didn’t do enough physical activity to counterbalance that.

            The third thing that happened was that the friend I had mentioned earlier – Ben – got a girlfriend. As life normally goes, this meant that Ben was busy a lot more than usual, and I began to have many more gaps in my schedule. Moreover, this meant that the biggest buffer I had to all the changes that occurred to my campus life was no longer all that effective, and the loneliness that came with a deserted campus would soon start to set in.

            Still, once more, I reiterate that these three things began to take shape in my first semester but didn’t significantly affect me until my second semester. The truth is, I finished out my first semester rather smoothly, despite some of the bumps that I felt along the way. This was even the case when it came to my classes, mostly due to a fortunate set of circumstance where UH decided to implement a pass/fail option once again (this means I can choose to not have my courses count towards my GPA while still receiving credit for them in my transcript as long as I pass). Thus, in many ways, I left my first semester not really expecting the crisis that was to come in just a few months’ time

            Before discussing my second semester and getting into that crisis, however, there is one important thing that happened during the break between first and second semester that I feel would be important to mention.

            During the first or second week of the break, my parents were talking to me about my semester and asking me how everything had gone. Specifically, they were wondering whether I was any closer to figuring out what I wanted to study. In response, I begun talking to them about the courses that I was taking, and how I essentially disliked the majority of what I had selected. I also explained that, because the courses I actually enjoyed – Class Piano & Russian History – felt a bit random, it was difficult for me to relate them to any specific major. Essentially, I explained to them that I wasn’t anywhere near figuring it out.

            My parents, understandably, responded with a bit of exasperation. They felt as though time only continued to pass, and that I had to select something sooner rather than later. The problem was that I still had absolutely zero clue what my potential major could even look like. Moreover, since the solution I came up with prior to my first semester as a sophomore (trying six unrelated courses that I felt would be interesting) didn’t help, I was also at a loss in terms of how to proceed.

            My father suggested that I take a practical approach towards solving this problem. For him, there were certain majors that could teach you specific skills that could be applied no matter what career path you ended up choosing – the two majors he had in mind at the time were Business (anything in business) and Computer Science. To add to this, he felt there were certain majors that could provide you with useful information about how the world worked – by this he was referring to majors such as Physics, Biology, or Chemistry (I think he was biased towards the sciences). Basically, his solution to my problem was that I should choose two majors – one that taught me specific skills that could be useful in the future and one that provided me with information on how things worked – so that I could get the benefit of both. That way, regardless of what career I chose later on, I could be well-equipped with valuable information and useful skills that should apply.  

            His idea made a lot of sense at the time, so I decided to take his advice. Right then and there I chose to pursue a double major in Biology and Computer Science and began looking up the requirements for each of these. I then enrolled in six of the courses that I would need to complete this path. Once again, they would all be online, and once again, I would be doing them from my apartment at UH.

            With that out of the way, what this all meant was that, when it came to entering my second semester as a sophomore, the landscape I was presented with would be similar to the one I had during my first semester, but with some serious modifications. I was still living alone, but my apartment was much dirtier and much less maintained than when I first moved in; campus life was still non-existent (this didn’t really change much); I still had a good friend I could hang out with, but he was much busier than he used to be; and I was still taking 6 online courses, but the reasoning I utilized to select these courses had changed.  

            Despite all these modifications, I went back to the university feeling pretty excited to start the new semester. It was the first time that I felt I was pursuing any sort of actual major/career path. On top of that, my first semester had gone pretty smoothly, so I didn’t see why that would change now.

            However, as I have alluded to multiple times now, it turned out that this was completely wrong. Things went downhill extremely fast. In fact, it only took two weeks for me to become a complete mess. After those two weeks, I felt lower than I had felt in months. I had no energy, and no motivation. I was angry, confused, frustrated, and felt completely burnt out. I scrapped the idea that I was going to double major in Biology and Computer Science, and essentially dropped the majority of my classes. For a moment, I thought replacing these courses with other courses that pertained to different subjects might help, but that only provided temporary relief. On February 1^st of 2020, I called my mom and told her that I needed to come home. I drove down that day, had a long conversation with my parents, and, within one week’s time, decided to drop all courses for that semester. I actually remember thinking that I was never going to go back to college, and that maybe I needed to go down a different path. What happened?

            Thinking back, my breakdown within these two weeks should have been expected. As I touched on earlier, there were three things that had begun to affect me in a negative way, and, at some point or other, those things were going to come together and hit me all at once. In my opinion, that was exactly what happened during the early portion of that second semester.

            Starting with my coursework, it was a bit naïve to think that enrolling in six online courses that all pertained to Computer Science or Biology was a good idea. I had just recently found the STEM related courses that I was taking during my first semester as a sophomore – Calculus II and Introduction to Programming – to be difficult and tedious; I also knew how problematic it had been to so much as attend these courses. So, I don’t really know what I expected when I made this selection, nor why I thought things were going to be different the second time around. Sure enough, I found myself dreading going to any of my courses from the very first day, as they pretty much all reminded me of the things I didn’t like about the courses I had been taking previously.

            Moving on to what was going on with both my apartment and my own personal health, the way that I was living along with where I was living were depressing to say the least. As I mentioned, I hadn’t done a deep clean of my apartment throughout the entire time that I had been a sophomore. By the time it got to my second semester, the place was disgusting. Moreover, the lack of decorations or individuality within the space made it feel like a prison cell. I was also extremely unhealthy, both because of what I was eating during my first semester along with the lack of any sort of exercise. Not only did this lead to me gaining some weight, but it had even become difficult to walk around or climb some stairs without feeling winded. All in all, the fact that I had to wake up to a space that was difficult to call home while also having to look in the mirror and see a shell of my former self only served to add stress and discomfort to my daily life.

            Finally, in terms of my social life, I had way less to do in my free time now that Ben was busy most of the time. I spent so much of the day locked inside of my apartment, and it took almost no time at all to start feeling bored and frustrated.

            In retrospect, I feel as though the combination of all three of these things was what caused me to blow up and drop out of my second semester as quickly as I did. Honestly, just the thought of waking up to a messy place, attending courses that I didn’t enjoy, not having anything to do after I attended them, all while feeling unhealthy and out of shape sounds awful even now. Still, interestingly enough, despite how evident those issues seem to me today, I remember not having any clue why I was feeling so low during that time.  

            The truth is the day I called my mom and told her I needed to come home was probably the most lost I had ever felt. I had absolutely no idea why I felt so down. I thought there was something wrong with me. It didn’t help that this wasn’t the first time that I was feeling dissatisfied. I had issues during high school, I had issues during freshman year, and here I was having issues all over again during my sophomore year – it was frustrating.

            On my drive back home, I spent a lot of time wrestling with this issue and reflecting on who I was as a person. The biggest question I was trying to answer was why I couldn’t seem to feel okay with my life on a consistent basis. I felt as though I had tried everything – I tried focusing on productivity; I tried focusing on being relaxed and enjoying my free-time; I tried to find a major/topic that I was passionate about to see how that would make me feel; I tried to just follow practical advice and dedicate myself to being a student – but none of it really helped. Where was I going wrong?  

            It was a tough question, and I didn’t come anywhere close to answering it on that car ride. Still, as I sat and thought about it, I did make a very important realization – a realization that still guides me to this day. Despite how backwards I felt during that period of my life, I concluded during that drive that there was nothing else to do but look forward. I thought that even if I never got to the point where I felt satisfied with myself on a consistent basis I still had to try. I had no idea what any of my issues actually were, nor what solutions existed that could solve them, but I felt as though I had to keep throwing different things at the wall and praying that something would stick.

            Because of this realization, the first thing I decided to do when I got home was to talk through everything with my parents in the hopes that I could find a new solution. For me, there was clearly something I was doing wrong, and I was interested in both finding out what it was and how to fix it.

            As I talked through my situation with my parents there were two points that seemed to stick out the most. For one, I was clearly having trouble with the shutdown caused by the pandemic and all the things that came with it. I didn’t like online coursework, I didn’t like living in isolation, I didn’t like not having anything to do, and I didn’t like having all of my socialization occur through virtual means. For two, I felt lost in terms of what I wanted to study and who I wanted to be in the future, and that feeling was causing a lot of frustration and stress.

            In response to my first concern my parents thought it would be best for me to stay home for the remainder of the semester. They thought this would at least help me feel a bit less isolated then I was at UH while also giving me something to do during the morning/night-time (have breakfast/dinner with them). This made a lot of sense to me, so I decided to take this advice. 

            My second concern was a bit more difficult to handle. It’s tricky trying to figure out who you want to be/what you want to study, but it can be even trickier trying to help someone else figure it all out. We can’t read anybody’s mind, and knowing what someone likes or what sorts of things they may want to study can, at times, be impossible. Thus, after talking through this entire situation with my parents for some time, the only solution we really came to was that I should take some time to cool down and reflect on it for a week or two to see if maybe that would help. This was exactly what I did for the next couple of days.

            I do want to point out that, during this time, I was still attending some university courses. I had dropped pretty much all of the courses I had been originally taking at the start of the semester, but, as I briefly mentioned, I had replaced them with some other courses to see if maybe those would help me either figure out what I want to major in or just feel a bit better in relation to my studies. Thus, I spent this set of days attending my online courses, hanging out with my family, and thinking a lot about who I was and who I wanted to be.

            Interestingly enough, for the first three or four days, I felt really happy with this sort of schedule. Taking my coursework from home felt like a breath of fresh air, and there was a moment where I thought that maybe that was all I would need to get myself out of my rut. But this was disproven relatively quickly. After the first three or four days, I started feeling the exact same way I had felt when I was at my apartment in UH, and I started to fear that, despite the fact that I had addressed a lot of the concerns I was having in terms of my social isolation, the concerns that I had in relation to my future were going to prove too much to handle.

            This changed some two or three days later. At around that time, I had what felt like a revelation. This revelation made me feel as though I finally understood how to fix the concerns I had in relation to my career/future/life as a whole. In fact, this revelation essentially pinned it all down to one specific thing that, if I could get rid of, would solve all of my problems: school.

            See, when I thought about all the turmoil I had experienced during high-school, freshman- , and sophomore-year, what struck me was how it seemed to fluctuate. There were times during all of those periods where I was relatively satisfied with myself/my life and there were times where I wasn’t. What was most striking about these fluctuations was how they seemed to coincide with my education – the happier periods of my life seemed to occur when I was not in school, while the gloomier periods occurred when I was. For me, this realization made things very simple – if I wanted to feel satisfied on a consistent basis, the first thing I needed to do was drop out of the university.

            As I thought more and more about this new-found solution, it began to make more and more sense. I concluded that me and school didn’t get along. I thought that I was unique in some ways, and that the ‘system’ which I had been put through wasn’t right for me. I felt as though I had to build my own path and figure out a different route to success. I also felt this was the reason I was so lost in terms of what major/career path I should choose. I thought that this way of thinking (going to school/choosing a major to study/being a university student) was constraining, and that I needed to adopt a much more flexible approach to life in order to solve my problems.

            (I understand that this realization/line of logic may sound far-fetched, sudden, or just plain random to the reader. That’s because it was. During this time, I was just flat-out lost. I didn’t know what direction I should take to solve any of my issues, and I was struggling to just piece it all together.)

            After I made this realization, I decided to have another talk with my parents about the whole thing. I had no idea what I was going to say, nor how I was going to get my parents to see my point of view, but I felt as though I had to get them to understand my newfound solution. Somehow, that same night, I went ahead and told my parents during dinner that I felt as though I had to forge my own path separate from university.

            Surprisingly, my parents took the whole thing very well. They said that they would support me with my decision to drop college, as long as I could provide them with a plan on what I was going to do in the future that they could agree with. I was thrilled and immediately began thinking about what that sort of plan would look like. (I won’t expand on this too much, but I am so incredibly grateful to my parents for their response and attitude at that time. I could go on and on about how amazing they are as parents. If it wasn’t for them, I would have never figured out who I was nor what I wanted to do in the future).

            Over the next two-three weeks, I laid out the foundation for my ‘plan for the future’. My thinking at the time was that I could work on several unrelated projects that, in combination, could lead to me having a happy and successful life. Each of these projects were designed to satisfy specific needs, and each of these needs were things I felt were important to living an accomplished life. For example, someone who is accomplished tends to have some form of stable income, so one of my projects was to find a job that didn’t require formal education that could provide me with that. As another example, someone who is accomplished tends to invest their stable income in order to make their money work for them, so another project was to learn about the stock market/investing. This line of logic was what I utilized to figure out every project that would make up my aforementioned plan, and I ended up deciding on around 4-5 things that I could work on that I felt would get me where I wanted to be.

            I remember being happy with what I came up with, and feeling as though my plan was relatively bulletproof. I also remember that, for the two-three weeks I spent coming up with all of this, I was so full of life and energy. I was excited to start working on these projects, and I felt as though I made the right choice in dropping college and pursuing my own things. After those two-three weeks, however, things started to change.

            See, my plan for the future may have sounded like a good one on paper, but it had a lot of issues in reality. For instance, I wanted to get a job that didn’t require a formal education that could provide me with a form of stable income, but what sort of job was that going to be? Pretty much every job people can work nowadays requires at least some form of degree/certification. The ones that don’t either don’t pay too well or require you to work incredibly difficult hours or perform incredibly strenuous labor. If I worked a job that didn’t pay so well, where was I going to get the income that I wanted to invest? And if I worked a job that was incredibly strenuous, where was I going to get the energy to work on all of my other projects?

            This wasn’t the only project that encountered issues. I wanted to learn about the stock market/investing, but there was so much information out there that it was impossible to know where to start. Or another project of mine was that I wanted to write a book, but what exactly was I going to write about?

The truth is the plan that I came up with and all the projects it involved was unrealistic – and for good reason. I was a sophomore that knew very little about the world and how it worked. What was I going to know about coming up with an entire plan for the future?

            Despite these glaring problems, I still felt during that time that my plan was a solid one, and I tried my best to work on all the projects that I set out for myself. Unsurprisingly, despite my efforts, I quickly found myself being inconsistent with said work. Those inconsistencies began to cause frustrations, and those frustrations began to cause stress. After some time, that stress became too much to handle and all the energy and excitement that I felt during those two-three weeks was sapped away. Soon I found myself once more in the same hole that I was in when I was attending university only a few weeks back.

            This was truly rock-bottom. The fact that I was feeling the exact same way that I felt in school now that I was out of school proved to me that my revelation was incorrect. Moreover, it left me with an uncomfortable question: if school wasn’t the problem, then what was? I was lost, angry, and sad. Worse still, I felt as though I couldn’t talk to my parents about what was going on since I was scared it may lead them to push me to go back to college. Even though I was no longer sure that school was the problem, I was still doubtful that going back would solve anything. Thus, I kept all of these struggles to myself and spent the next couple of days feeling incredibly down.

            Luckily, around that time, one of my good childhood friends had messaged me that we should take a weeklong trip to the beach (my parents own a house at a beach near my hometown, which is how this was possible during the pandemic). He told me he thought it would be much more fun being locked inside of a beach house alongside a friend then locked inside of his house by himself. Considering my circumstances, I felt inclined to agree.

            We ended up going for a bit longer than a week. Pretty much everything was closed, so we mostly spent our time doing things we would’ve normally done at home. We cooked a few meals, did a bit of exercise, played some games, and so on. But, despite how typical our activities were, the whole trip ended up being a lot of fun and a true breath of fresh air.

            Something about being in a different and completely relaxing environment helped me clear my mind a bit and take a look at my situation in a new light. On that beach trip, I realized a couple of things. For one, I still had no answer to the question of what my future was going to look like, what career I should pursue, or what I needed to do to be satisfied with myself on a consistent basis. Second, despite my gripes with the university, it didn’t seem as though forging my own path outside of it was really going to solve anything. In reality, I felt it was probably a better idea to have a more structured path I could follow, and I thought that the rigid framework university’s typically utilized could provide me with that. Finally, if I was going to have to go back to being a university student, I felt as though I had to choose some major that I could stick with all the way through.

            As I sat there during this trip and thought about this last point more and more, I began remembering a few things about my life that I felt indicated what major I should choose. I remembered that ever since I was a kid I had always loved to ask and ponder about people. I remembered that back when I used to play tennis I would always ask my coach about different players he’s worked with and how their personalities were reflected in their game. I remembered that during high-school I used to come up with different ‘theories’ for why people behaved the way they behaved, and I was really curious about questions pertaining to things like intelligence, awareness, and motivation. And I remembered that during college none of those curiosities really wavered, as I continued to want to answer questions pertaining to why people did what they did.

            All of these memories made the decision of what I wanted to settle on for my choice of major an easy one – I had to study Psychology. I didn’t really know anything about Psychology at that point in time, nor what any of the careers within Psychology entailed. But I felt as though all of these questions and interests I had throughout the course of my life must’ve meant something. I thought, if I had always been curious about people, maybe I should explore the subject that deals with learning about people.

            Thus, ironically, I came back from that beach trip with a plan for the future I thought my parents could agree with. I was going to go back to college and study Psychology. I wasn’t any less lost, nor did I know why I thought my second attempt at exploring this subject – or my second attempt at college – would go any differently. But I decided to trust the gut-feeling I had at that time.

            With that, the story of my sophomore year ends. The rest of my time at home during that semester was spent hanging out with friends, helping my parents out with whatever they needed, and working on some of my hobbies. I know that I didn’t touch too much on anything academic, or really anything that is all that college related, but, in my defense, it was a weird year that was defined by the pandemic. Still, I learned a lot of lessons from my sophomore year – some of which will be discussed below – and I hope my story resonates with some of you.

            That said, my next entry is going to be full of academic information, resume building, and college living. So, if you’re interested in reading more on my story and about some of those details go ahead and check out the next section: Reflections and Lessons from my Undergraduate Experience – Junior Year.

 My Advice –

1. Be cognizant of the small details that you care about and try using them to your advantage.

            As I mentioned when talking about my experience as a sophomore, I believe that the issues I was having had something to do with a lot of small things that had built up over time. I hadn’t been physically active for some time, so I felt out of shape; the only friend I could hang out with found a girlfriend, so I didn’t have much opportunity to socialize; I wasn’t making sure my living space stayed clean, so my apartment ended up being a mess; etc. I believe that the combination of all of these sensations/situations resulted in me having my crisis. Still, I don’t want it to seem as though you have to be on top of the details that matter to you at all times for you to live a happy and satisfying life.

            (For clarity, when I say details, I am referring to all of the extra things that people tend/want to do on a daily/weekly/monthly basis that don’t pertain to their main job/profession/task. It can be anything, from going to the gym, to cleaning an apartment, to working on a hobby, to doing some daily/nightly routine.)

            For me, things like maintaining myself in shape, eating healthy, sleeping well, and hanging out with friends are important. These are things I normally try to incorporate into my schedule, and it can be stressful when I am unable to do so. However, there are times where life – especially university life – will introduce difficulties that make staying consistent with these things incredibly difficult. Your situation will be ever-changing within college, and it’s okay, even expected, for you to slip and become inconsistent with some of the details that matter to you. What’s more important is that you remain cognizant of said details and work on trying to incorporate them into your schedule whenever possible.

            There are two reasons for this, each of which I will discuss in turn. For one, being aware of the things that matter to you and how often you’ve been able to work on them allows you to have a better understanding of your daily/weekly routine. That understanding, in turn, makes it less likely for you to be surprised by inconsistencies within said routine. Second, being aware of the small details that matter to you while actively trying to incorporate them into your schedule can be a rewarding and comforting experience all by itself.

            To begin with the first reason, being cognizant of the small details that matter to you allows you to garner a better understanding of your daily/weekly routine, and this understanding prevents you from being too surprised whenever you start to slip. For me, during my sophomore year, I completely forgot about how important things like physical health, socializing, and sleep were to me, and I never really made a conscious effort towards incorporating them into my daily routine. Consequentially, when things began to go downhill, the sudden realization that all of the things that mattered to me were no longer part of my day/week caught me off guard. Moreover, because I hadn’t been thinking of these details on a consistent basis while considering where I could fit them into my day-to-day, it meant I had relatively little understanding of what circumstances were preventing me from doing so. Both the surprise and the lack of understanding, in turn, caused me a tremendous amount of stress, and that stress only served to make my crisis that much worse. If, instead, I had been aware of the small things that mattered to me, I feel as though I would’ve been able to look at my life/daily schedule in a more objective and long-term fashion, while also avoiding any sudden shocks.

            A perfect example of what I mean by this would be the priority I have with going to the gym. If I am looking at my weekly schedule with the intention of trying to find a time where I can incorporate the gym, I am more likely to garner an understanding of what sorts of things are preventing me from doing so – perhaps my classes are at an awkward time and there isn’t a big enough gap to fit in an adequate work out; perhaps the gym is a bit far from campus and the only time I could make that drive would be during peak traffic hours; perhaps the recreation center is only open during a specific timeframe, and I am unable to go during those hours. Regardless, each of these reasons provides me with some sort of explanation for why I have become inconsistent with one of the details that mattered to me. This explanation, in turn, alleviates some stress as it allows me to have a better understanding of my situation and what obstacles I need to deal with to get to where I want to be. On top of that, it prevents me from having any sort of sudden realization in relation to the gym and my schedule, as I have been actively aware of it for some time.

            Moving on to the second reason, being cognizant of the small details that matter to you while actively striving towards incorporating them into your daily routine can be a rewarding and comforting experience all by itself. It can be nice to know that, even if you aren’t where you currently want to be in terms of your daily/weekly routine, you are actively striving towards getting there. Moreover, once you actually manage to get back to the point that you wanted to be, you can feel incredibly confident in your ability to slip from time to time and still be alright.

            With those two reasons out of the way, I do want to make it clear that I realize how time consuming and difficult life/work/school can be. When things are difficult, it can seem as though these small details are more of a luxury than a priority, and that time is better spent focusing on whatever work is most important instead of thinking about some small hobby or activity. Still, even though that makes sense, I actually believe that the small details that matter to people become more important as their schedules get busier. This is because I feel as though they can serve as powerful tools within packed schedules, as they can be taken advantage of to create efficient, effective, and productive routines.

            Herein lies the second part of this first piece of advice: take advantage of the small details that matter to you and try incorporating them into your schedule in a strategic manner. To explain what I mean, I will use an example I have touched on multiple times throughout this essay: keeping my apartment clean.

            As I mentioned when discussing my experience as a sophomore, one of the factors that contributed towards some of my disarray was how un-clean my living space was. When I returned to college for my junior year, I wanted to avoid making a similar mistake and sought  to make cleaning my apartment part of my weekly routine.

            At first, it was a bit of a struggle to incorporate cleaning into my schedule. Most people I knew dedicated one day of the week to cleaning their entire space. They would set out a big portion of time on a Saturday or Sunday so they could do laundry, clean their restroom, clean their kitchen, and so on. However, this strategy didn’t work out too well for me.

            During my junior year, I went out to clubs/parties on most Thursdays and Saturdays. I would normally drink when I went out, and it led to me being pretty hungover the next day. When I was hungover, I normally didn’t do much of anything, especially anything productive. That meant that I couldn’t use Friday or Sunday effectively most weeks. Because of this, I had to take advantage of the other days to make sure that I was on top of my homework, my personal life, and my physical health. That was all fine, but it meant that I rarely had any big gaps during my week, especially weekends, that I could dedicate to cleaning up my whole space. Thus, that original strategy didn’t really work for me, and it seemed, for a time, as though I was destined to live in an un-clean space for all of my college years.

            That changed a few weeks into my junior year. At around that time, I decided that I should learn how to cook. Because I started to cook, I started to have dirty dishes that I had to wash. Because I didn’t have too many dishes, and because dirty dishes really grossed me out, I felt as though I couldn’t leave these dishes uncleaned for too much time. However, after I would cook, I wasn’t really in the mood to start washing dishes right away. Therefore, the only option I had was to wash my dishes the next morning.

            Surprisingly, washing dishes in the morning was really easy and seamless. I would wake up, shower, wash the dishes, get my stuff, and head out to start my day. After some time, washing dishes in the morning became an almost essential part of my routine, as it sort of put me in the right headspace to go and do work. To add to this, another interesting thing that happened was that, as I was washing dishes, I would occasionally look around my apartment and notice that an area had gotten particularly dirty. If I had extra time, and sometimes even if I didn’t, I would go and quickly clean it before I headed out.

            After some time of doing this random and sporadic cleaning, my apartment ended up getting to a point where it was no longer a depressing or disgusting place to live. Moreover, I had found a way to incorporate cleaning into my schedule so that it could remain that way on a consistent basis. To top this all off, cleaning had actually become an essential part of my day, as I tended to use it to put myself in the right headspace to go and do work.

            This is what I am referring to whenever I say that you should take advantage of the small details that matter to you and try incorporating them into your schedule in a strategic way. Essentially, what I mean is that you should try inserting these details into your schedule in a way that maximizes/takes advantage of their benefits. This is sort of an abstract concept, as it can be a bit difficult to know what I mean by ‘benefits’, and even more tricky to know what ‘benefits’ each of your details actually provide. But what I am trying to get at is that most of the details that matter to people tend to put them in different states of mind, and those states of mind can be utilized in a strategic way.

            For clarity’s sake, I will talk about a detail that matters to me and how I can utilize it strategically within my schedule – by this I am referring to going to the gym. Going to the gym tends to make me feel good while doing it, but I come out feeling pretty tired. Because of this, it doesn’t really make sense for me to go to the gym to start my day, as it makes it way more difficult for me to work on anything else. On the contrary, if I put my gym time at the end of the day, it serves as a sort of relief from most of my day’s stress and it leaves me nice and tired so that I can rest afterwards. Thus, the gym is typically utilized within my schedule as a way to finish out my day.

            Basically, I would advise the reader to try and pay attention to how each of the small details that matter to them tends to make them feel. From there, I would recommend they consider where they could fit these details into their schedule so they could maximize those sensations. The goal is to find a way to be consistent with the details that they may care about, while also having them be of benefit, both to themselves and to their day/week as a whole.

            As a final point, I want to quickly stress that not all details have to be something ‘productive’ or directly beneficial. There are small things that may matter only to you and don’t provide any real benefit outside of this. But that doesn’t make them any less important. By this, I am referring to things like, having a night-time/morning routine, cooking a homemade meal (even if it’s not a healthy one), planning a cute outfit for the day, and so on. Some of these things can be incredibly beneficial in regard to someone’s peace of mind, so they should be considered as equally, if not more, important within a daily/weekly schedule.

2. Don’t expect your classes to tell you much about what your career/future is going to look like.

            As I’ve mentioned when discussing both my freshman and sophomore year, it can be pretty easy to feel lost in college. Knowing what you want to do and who you want to be isn’t easy. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the college courses you take aren’t going to do much to help you figure it all out.

            This was definitely something that caught me by surprise. As I talked about at the beginning of this essay, I had gone out of my way to purposefully take random courses in a wide variety of subjects in the hopes that it could give me some insight into what sorts of careers/subjects I might like. However, no matter how varied the courses I took were, I felt no closer to getting that answer.

            (Really quickly, my opinion on this doesn’t pertain only to online courses. Yes, during my sophomore year, all of my classes were online, and that was definitely the biggest contributor to me feeling dis-interested in my courses and the subjects I was learning. But my opinion on this has remained the same throughout my junior and senior years. No matter what course I took, even courses that I really liked, I don’t feel as though they did anything in terms of helping me figure out what career I should pursue/what sorts of things I may be interested in.)

            I feel as though there are two reasons why college courses aren’t too helpful in terms of helping students figure out who they want to be/what they want to study. For one, there are a lot of different factors that go into whether or not you like/dis-like a class, and the majority of them have nothing to do with what the subject is, nor what career the topic may pertain to. And second, most college courses aren’t designed to teach you about any specific career, nor what sorts of things you may enjoy doing in the future. I will talk about each of these in turn.

            To start with the first point, liking/dis-liking a class oftentimes has little to do with the actual subject/material you are learning. Yes, there were subjects that I wasn’t that interested in (I don’t like advanced math or physics, for example). Yes, it was incredibly difficult to enjoy classes that pertained to these subjects, regardless of who was teaching it or how it was taught. And yes, knowing that I didn’t like these subjects helped me figure out what sort of careers/subjects I should avoid. But eliminating math and physics did very little to help me choose between psychology, biology, chemistry, music, history, and so on. I took classes in virtually all of these subjects, and I found myself enjoying or hating these courses for reasons that had nothing to do with the topic.

            One of the things that isn’t mentioned all that often is how much random stuff you have to deal with as a university student within your courses. By this, I am referring to things like attendance grades, a TA teaching your course, courses that aren’t properly organized, instructors that don’t answer emails, assignments that have vague instructions, and so on. These things all add confusion, stress, or difficulty to a course, and can make the whole process of taking that class unpleasant (I realize a lot of people enjoy attendance grades, but I didn’t go to all of my classes, so I didn’t).

            Personally, I found myself consistently struggling against a lot of the factors I just mentioned and having my grades/experience as a student affected because of it. There were courses where I felt as though I knew 100% of the material but ended up with an A- or a B+ because an assignment wasn’t clear enough, a TA was grading too harshly, or an exam asked questions that were hard to understand.

            Naturally, this sort of thing was extremely frustrating. This frustration would, in turn, make me feel dis-inclined towards a particular class. On top of that, whenever I didn’t experience this sort of thing, the lack of frustration would oftentimes make me feel more inclined towards that class. The problem is, those inclinations weren’t based on anything related to the subject and were instead related to how much random nonsense I had to deal with to get the grade I wanted.

            See, for better or for worse, doing well in their college courses is something that matters to a lot of people. GPA is an important metric within society – particularly American society – as it is often what a lot of masters/graduate programs (and even some jobs) look at when screening their applicants. When it comes to taking your college courses, a difference of just a few points in an exam can often be what determines if you get an A or a B (4.0 vs 3.0 at UH). If a college course adds difficulty artificially through these random, external factors, it just makes the process of trying to get as high a grade as possible that much more stressful, and that much more time-consuming. 

            In many ways, one of the biggest problems of relying on a college course to help you figure out your future career is how much weight is behind each of these courses. The process of trying to figure out how to succeed in each course and get as high a grade as possible often takes away from the process of considering/appreciating the material that you are learning. For me, the most difficult courses I took often felt like a giant scramble, and I normally wouldn’t even realize how much time had passed, how much information I had learned, or what the big picture of the course was by the time I was done with it. Thus, despite the fact that I had put time into the course, learned the material, and did decently well on the exams and assignments, it was very hard to have any overarching feelings about the material in relation to how it fit into my wider passions or future career.

            That all being said, there are courses in college that feel fair, well-paced, informative, and enjoyable. Furthermore, there may be times where you feel as though the material you are learning is engaging and may even get you excited to show up to class. Despite that, I don’t think even these courses will help you too much in terms of figuring out what you want to study or who you want to be. The reason for this is the second thing that I had mentioned a few paragraphs ago, which is that college courses are just simply not designed to help you figure out what career path you should take.

            To explain why I am saying this, I will talk about what was probably my absolute favorite course at the University of Houston (UH) – Abnormal Psychology.

            The Abnormal Psychology course at my university was designed to teach students about a multitude of different psychological disorders. Each lecture or two was based on a chapter from a textbook. Each chapter discussed a specific category of psychological disorder – such as mood disorders, stress disorders, personality disorders, and so on – and they would do so by detailing the numerous known psychological disorders within each category. We learned about the onset, prevalence, and known treatments for things like depression, anxiety, OCD, PTSD, and so on. We had three exams, each of which covered 3-4 chapters. We also had to write two essays. One essay was an investigative report on one specific psychological disorder – you can choose whichever one you wanted – in which you not only had to include scientific articles pertaining to the disorder you chose, but also an interview with a professional psychologist who treated/dealt with people who had said disorder. The other essay required us to watch a movie in which one of the characters was suffering from a psychological disorder – once again, you could choose whichever movie you wanted – and then write about what factors may have contributed to the onset of this disorder along with what treatment options you would recommend.

            As you can see, this course provided a heap of information related to different psychological disorders and everything surrounding them. On top of that, the assignments that we had to do within the course forced students to engage with the material and think about what we were learning in a critical way. This was all great from an information perspective. However, it wasn’t so good if you were trying to find out anything about the field of psychology as a whole, or what careers existed within it.

            See, the problem with my Abnormal Psychology course was that all it did was teach us about psychological disorders. It never explained what being a psychologist was like. It never discussed what treating people or being in a clinical setting was like. It never talked about what becoming a clinical psychologist entailed, or what options were available for that career path. And even when the course pushed its students to interview an actual psychologist, the interviews we did were too focused on one specific disorder to get any information on the overarching career.

            The thing is, this makes complete sense. This course was incredibly dense, and the enormous quantity of information that we had to cover didn’t allow for extra time to talk about anything else. Moreover, why would the course even bother to go into these things? Abnormal Psychology is a course you typically take as a junior within UH. Most of the people who are taking this course are already declared psychology majors that have some idea what they want to do in the future. Thus, spending any time discussing future careers with this group of people would more than likely be a waste, and that time would be better spent making sure they learn the content that is relevant to their future.

            Still, even though that is all completely logical, there is one major problem with it – if advanced courses are for people who already know what they want to do, that would imply that introductory courses are designed to help people figure out what career/major they should pursue, but they aren’t. Introductory courses at the university level are designed to help people who are going to study that subject learn the fundamentals that are necessary to succeed in the more advanced classes.

            Subjects are incredibly dense. Advanced courses at the university level take a deep dive at whatever subject they cover, and they don’t spend a lot of time going over the basics that you should already know. If an introductory course doesn’t properly teach these fundamentals to students, all of those individuals will find themselves incredibly behind in years 2,3, and 4. Thus, introductory courses face a similar problem to advanced courses in that they simply have to cover way too much information to spend any time delving on careers/futures within the subject.

            In other words, when I say that courses at the university level aren’t designed to help students figure out what they want to be, what I mean is that these courses are instead designed to maximize the knowledge that a student who is pursuing a specific major acquires in that topic. If a student is pursuing psychology, for example, every course they take in the topic will aim to teach them as much relevant and important information about psychology as possible. Although this is great for anyone who knows what they want to study, it means that students who don’t know what they want to study won’t find what they are looking for within their courses. In my opinion, these students should look elsewhere.

            Still, I don’t want to leave my readers with a complete sense of gloom. I do think there are things in college that help students figure out what they want to do/who they want to be. In fact, this will be an entire point of advice in my next entry where I talk about my junior year. To give you guys a quick hint as to what I will be talking about, the number one thing that I think anyone can do to figure out what they want to be is: throw things at the wall and see what sticks. Make sure to read the next entry if you want to know what I mean by this!

3. Try your best to be in the right state of mind before making huge decisions.

            During my sophomore year of college, I made what felt like an enormous decision in dropping a semester. At the time, I was going through a tremendous amount of turmoil, and, in many ways, felt as though this decision was necessary to feel better about both myself and my life as a whole. However, in retrospect, even though I am completely glad that I chose to drop out of the university for a bit, it was the wrong decision in terms of getting me to a happier place.

            As I mentioned when discussing my experience as a sophomore, the happiness that dropping a semester brought me was short-lived. It took only a few weeks for a lot of the same sensations that had plagued me when I was a student to come rushing back. In my opinion, the reason for this has something to do with the fact that there were a lot of small things that had been negatively affecting me that were completely separate from whether or not I was attending university. By this, I am referring to things like not having anyone to hang out with, not being in good physical shape, not having a clean space, and all the other things that I have mentioned incessantly up to this point.

            I firmly believe that, if I could go back in time and work on these things, I wouldn’t have had the crisis that I had. Sure, I had my problems with online learning, not knowing what I wanted to study, and the classes that I was taking. But, as you may find out in my future entry’s, I had those problems during my junior and senior years as well. The difference between my sophomore year and these later years was that I always tried to put myself in a better state of mind prior to making any sort of major decision.  

            It is my opinion that human beings tend to be much more resilient than they are given credit for. I have found that there were multiple times where I could deal with a few stressful things that were going on while still attending to the rest of my life in an efficient and effective manner. Most of the time, as long as not everything was going downhill, I could normally look at whatever problems I was having in a more objective sense, quickly pinpointing what sorts of things required my immediate attention, and what things could be dealt with in the long term.

            This sort of thing is where the main point of advice for this section comes from. Essentially, I came to realize that as long as I wasn’t completely distraught, overwhelmed, or beaten down by life, I could typically look at my situation in an accurate way while figuring out the best way to deal with it. I also realized that the stress and turmoil that most situations cause isn’t typically enough to place me in a state of disarray all by itself. Basically, as long as I was generally in a good state of mind, most of the problems that I was faced with were relatively easy to manage and rarely required any sort of drastic course of action to solve. Thus, it is my belief that you should try your best to be in said good state of mind whenever you’re addressing the problems you are faced with. Moreover, if you feel as though you aren’t in a good state of mind, you should try finding ways to get to that point prior to making any drastic decisions. In my opinion, this will help you assess your situation in a more accurate way, allowing you to figure out what things are an immediate problem, what things aren’t, and what the best course of action to solve your issues actually is.

            Still, even though I feel that this advice is good advice, I also don’t feel it is all that helpful by itself. The biggest reason for this is that maintaining a ‘good state of mind’ can oftentimes be tricky, and it can be even trickier to figure out how to get back to that state of mind after things have begun to go awry.

            Earlier, I briefly mentioned that ‘as long as not everything was going downhill I could normally look at whatever problems I was having in a more objective sense’. The problem is there will be times in life where everything goes downhill. I had weeks in college where I did poorly on an exam, got into a fight with my significant other, was inconsistent with my hobbies, and got sick to top it all off. During weeks like those, maintaining a good state of mind was pretty much impossible. Consequentially, any problems I encountered would oftentimes feel incredibly serious and incredibly stressful.

            When this sort of thing happens, the idea that I should try and get to a better state of mind before doing anything significant to address the issues that I am having feels wrong. It would be logical to assume that the issues that I am faced with are what’s causing the poor state of mind in the first place, so wouldn’t addressing them be the best course of action?

            Still, even though that makes sense, I still firmly believe that you should try your best to get to a better state of mind prior to making any sort of drastic decision. The reason for this is that, in most case scenarios, people only need to make minor adjustments in their behavior/routine/attitude in order to get themselves to feel a bit better and have a clearer state of mind. In other words, even when you are going through periods of your life where everything is going downhill, there are a few things you can easily implement into your day-to-day to get to a better state of mind. After you are in said better state of mind, you can then look at some of the larger issues and consider whether or not any major course of action is required to solve them.  

            In my opinion, there are circumstances that are going to negatively affect you no matter what. If you failed a test, if you got into a fight with your significant other, if you have been having trouble sleeping, if you haven’t been able to hang out with your friends, if you haven’t been able to work on your hobbies, etc., you will likely begin to feel a bit gloomy or under the weather. A lot of times, whenever everything is going downhill, one, or many, of these things tends to typically go with it. Moreover, they tend to be a large part of the justification for any major course of action that you may be considering (I failed a test because I had trouble studying because I don’t like these courses because I don’t like this major).

            The thing about any of these circumstances that I just mentioned is that they typically have relatively simple solutions when taken as problems in isolation. If you are doing poorly in a class, for example, you may just need to dedicate some more time to studying, or maybe go and attend some tutoring sections. If you are having trouble sleeping, you may just need to find a way to get plenty tired during the day, so that, come night-time, you are so exhausted that you have no other choice but to sleep (I know that some people have issues with sleep that are much more complicated than this, this sort of thing likely doesn’t apply to them). A lot of the stuff I mentioned in the previous paragraph can typically be resolved with these sorts of simple fixes. Even though none of these simple fixes will solve all the issues someone is dealing with, they can often go a long way in helping someone feel better about their situation as a whole. This is what I was referring to earlier when I mentioned that, in most case-scenarios, people only need to make minor adjustments in their routine/behavior/attitude in order to get to a better state of mind.

            To put this all a different way, whenever you are going through a period of your life where everything starts to go downhill, you should look at the problems that you are having and see if any of them have simple fixes that you can implement rather seamlessly. If at all possible, you should address the issues that have the easiest solutions first, and not really consider any drastic course of action until after you have done so. The hope is that, by dealing with some of these simpler problems, you end up in a better state of mind than you were in previously. This better state of mind will, in turn, allow you to assess the other, more complicated issues that you are having in a more accurate fashion.  

            (As a quick disclaimer, I am well aware that there will definitely be times when this is not possible. Sometimes, life is just completely beating you down and finding any way out feels like a complete impossibility. In these moments, drastic changes may be what is needed to dig yourself out of a hole. I don’t want people to second guess themselves. If you feel as though you need to do something drastic, by all means, do something drastic. But, if that drastic decision doesn’t work out, I do encourage you to see if there are a few small things in your life that you could work on to try and help you feel better prior to assessing the rest of your situation.)

            There is more I would like to say on this matter, as I think it is somewhat complicated, but this is a topic I will address again within the advice section of a future entry. Still, the general point is that, during your time in college (and really during life as a whole) you will go through some relatively tough emotional periods. It is important to try and take these periods in stride and generally stray away from making incredibly drastic decisions when you are at your lowest. If at all possible, try your best to put yourself in the right mindset before choosing any impactful course of action. This may mean that you need to take some time to do something that will help you unwind, or it may mean that you should take a few days/weeks to work on getting some of the smaller things in order first. Afterwards, you can reflect on some of the things that have been bothering you and see if those things warrant any sort of big change.

            With that all out of the way, this concludes my entry on my sophomore year. If you are interested in reading more of my story and hearing more of my advice, make sure to check out my next entry: Reflections and Lessons from my Undergraduate Education – Junior year.