Overwhelmed at school

Post Reply New Topic

Hey everyone-

So I want to know if anybody can relate, if anybody has any coping skills, and if anyone else has any other miscellaneous thoughts as well.

I am in university. Here are things that have always been an issue in any grade:

1. Overwhelmed by the sounds throughout the school day; this slowly drains my energy and leads to fatigue.
2. After a while, I become depressed, and it is hard to enjoy life.
3. Almost every day I feel like I'd rather stay in my room. Feelings of dread.

In University, here are other issues:

1. As an adult, I have to manage tons more details, so they seem to just bombard me. Walking to classes + paying for things + feeding myself + classes + the noises + the inconsistent schedule + those weird days on campus where people play music on speakers + tons of details from classes that I am interested in (moreso than in high school, which is good but also just MORE details to think of!). All of these things add up and I want to just run away to the wilderness.

2. My career is super important to me, but because I'm always fatigued from school, I don't think I'm putting all of my energy into the right places. So like 30-40% of my vitality is taken from just trying to exist, whereas I could use that to...practice piano or something that is relevant to my life goals. So because I'm competitive, I still compensate and work through the fatigue. By the end of the year (after school is out for summer), I can barely even get up out of my bed for about a week.

So -- any thoughts? How do you cope with college? How do you preserve your precious energy? How do you remain (or try to remain) relatively healthy, despite the demands of the adult world?

I'm in a similar position, though not exactly the same, so I'd definitely be willing to hear out any advice on the matter. I don't have major problems with stimuli, but adapting to inconsistency and the greater fluidity of social structuring by comparison to high school has been a huge hurdle for me that I still haven't gotten over. Like you, I've had a problem with just trying to stay afloat, academically-speaking. I've got a year left, and I'm on track to graduate with honors, but I feel like I've barely done anything substantial outside of classes. I haven't networked or planned ahead for post-graduation, which is especially critical considering my field of study (music composition). Usually, I want nothing more than to just retreat into myself outside of classes.

Hey! That's my major too! Pretty rare, so this is kind of cool. Yeah, networking is pretty important, I agree. I haven't done much either x__x

This point was exactly what I had misgivings about when I made the decision to pursue this major, too. I'm completely inept at actually initiating any meaningful interactions with people, at least in person. It's not even so much about my anxiety, although that doesn't help. Often, I just don't think to do it, and would rather be doing more interesting things by myself. Of course, that rears its ugly head when I'm stressed out and don't have anyone to confide in, but most of my drive to reverse my predicament is still predicated on my awareness of the necessity of gaining more friends and connections as a career move, as opposed to being a natural social inclination.

Perhaps you can learn to accept your motivation for making those social connections. It might feel inauthentic, boring, or taxing, but maybe you can find a way to enjoy it. I rather like making connections with other pianists and composers, because for once I can figure out something actually relevant to me that we can both talk about other than "So...what career are you pursuing? How's the weather?" Those conversations get dull, but asking someone about harmonic structure in Rachmaninoff's later preludes is...refreshing. Haha.

Unfortunately, once I have actually established some interesting line of conversation, that's when my anxiety starts to kick in. I'll second guess myself, and because I so rarely get exposure to my classmates outside of academic functions, I operate under this assumption that they're always at their best. Rationally, I know this doesn't make sense, but that doesn't keep me from getting seriously intimidated. I feel much less disciplined as well, because I'm surrounded by people constantly active or practicing and refining their skills, and I get paranoid that my peers are judging me as lazy. "Practicing" composition and theory can look like slacking off to the untrained eye, after all!

For non-music classes like anthropology, biology, English lit., have you thought about pre-studying?

I think pre-studying is so effective it's almost cheating! Just an entirely legal form of cheating.

Do you mean studying the material before a class?

Or a day or two before. And not necessarily studying. For example, if it's geology, it can be ever so casually leafing through the next chapter, almost like it's a movie preview.