College Life Anxieties: What To Expect & Do?

Transitioning from late teenage years into early adulthood is exciting, hopeful, scary, long-anticipated and one of the most significant periods of your life. It’s this sudden freedom of having absolute autonomy and wondering if you’re ‘adult’ enough for it. For the past 2 years, this transition hasn’t been the usual or per expectation. The ‘big leap’ of college took place as remote learning for the majority. But as the teaching-learning process commences in offline mode, and ‘college life’ becomes a reality in more ways than logging in attendance on a laptop while hiding behind cameras - we answer questions that are on your mind.

1. ‘I have been at home for two years, I’ve gained weight and my clothes don’t fit well’
If you’ve related to this, know that almost everyone has expressed this fear. It’s natural, cut yourself some slack. For more than 600 days, you’ve spent your time at home with stress eating or snacking as one of the possible ways of self-soothing. ‘Pandemic weight gain’ is a real phenomenon that is being experienced globally. Start small, find your way to overcome stress eating, know that you’re going out again and there will be more physical movement, make an active choice to take the stairs, walk short distances as opposed to taking public transport and work on boosting your metabolism. Getting 8 hours of sleep every day, drinking 6-8 glasses of water and moving for 5 minutes every hour helps to boost your metabolism.

2. ‘I don’t want to go back, what if I get Covid?’
The world shut down due to the Covid-19 virus, and over two years, we lost more people than we had ever envisioned or wished. The fear of contracting the virus and giving it to our loved ones is valid. The strategy here is to balance the news you’re reading - read about the good and bad sides of it, so there’s no information overload from one perspective. Get yourselves vaccinated - a lot of colleges are running vaccination camps. Follow safety protocols - wear masks even when it seems safe and sanitize constantly. Express yourself - a lot of people are worrying about the same thing and are apprehensive about voicing it out loud in the fear of sounding ‘paranoid’. Take a small step, share your fears, and you might find someone who resonates with it, reassures you and together you can fight your fears.

3. 'Umm, I am not really friends with anyone'
You’re sailing the same boat as your peers, yet again! College friendships might be on unknown grounds but you’ve gone through the same experience and a life-changing one at that. You don’t have to find your best friend on day 1. Before you find friends, find people. Find people you have interesting conversations with, those you can shop with, those who nerd it out with you, those who’ll lead you to some unknown adventures, those who feel like home and those who have the polar opposite views. These people will together weave the narrative of who you come to be and what this experience dictates for you. Life is short, college life is even shorter. Be open to learning, making mistakes, talking to everyone and putting yourself out there - it’ll possibly turn out to be one of the richest experiences.

What you want to do and how you want to do it is up to you. But we can assure you that a lot of people going back to college have the same fears and are wondering what to expect. If there are any other questions you have, please put them in the comments and we’ll be happy to take those up. If you just want a place to dump your worries and fears, vent it out!