College is a time of self-discovery. Living on your own and becoming independent in the blink of an eye can be taxing on anyone. For young adults with complex hormones and demanding workloads, it can be even more challenging. As the semester reaches a point of high stress and activities become more demanding, it’s important to remind yourself and your friends of steps you can take when obligations start to harm your mental health.

Mindfulness is an important skill to learn and it can help while adjusting to independence. It is commonly associated with meditation, but there is no set way to meditate. The focus of mindfulness is checking in with your body, mind and surroundings. Adding two minutes to your morning to breathe and focus on what your body is feeling helps to center your mind and is a quick, straightforward way to prioritize your mental health.

Time management also plays a vital role in mental health. As frustrating as it can be to accept and put into practice, being proactive can positively influence your day and make your whole week run smoother. We always say “I’ll do it tonight” or “I’ll do it this weekend,” but that mindset causes work to pile up and can get very overwhelming. Being aware of how you are using your time can help alleviate some of the tasks weighing down on your mind. Instead of laying in bed right after dinner, do some mindless tasks that need to be done: take out the trash on your way to the bathroom, put your laundry away while watching a movie or even take a few minutes before bed to respond to that email you’ve been ignoring all day. To-do lists always look more intimidating than they actually are and if you take time to do smaller tasks as time allows, the stress of completing everything goes down substantially. 

When you feel your mental health is beginning to deplete, you should have a few coping strategies in your back pocket. Suppose you are in a situation where you feel yourself becoming anxious or feeling out of place. In that case, it is always okay to leave and take a walk or even go sit by yourself. There are also many creative outlets to blow off steam or bring some sunshine to your day. Singing in the car, doodling on your iPad and writing whatever comes to mind can all be great ways to relax. Some people even find solace in exercise by walking, running or lifting weights to work off any stressors of the day.

While there are many habits you can create and coping strategies you can use, it is never a bad thing to seek outside help. Friends are always a great resource and sometimes having someone who will listen makes all the difference. Counseling services are available on campus for students – sessions are less than an hour and can help with understanding your mental health. If you are interested in setting up a consultation, email the counseling services office at counselingservices@william.jewell.edu. 

Mental health is just as important as physical health. Taking the time to notice how you are doing and acting accordingly is a hard skill to develop but anything is possible with a bit of focus and prioritization. Take care of yourself – you’re doing your best.

Getting a good education

I think we are all grateful to be here at William Jewell College or even to be in college in general. The professors are live encyclopedias that you can use anytime you need. We have four years to learn all of the things we want to learn before we have to work doing the same thing every day.

Late-night drives with blasting music and cold air

These are definitely the moments I feel most alive. Last night, my roommate and I went on a drive at midnight. We had the windows down on the highway and played “Picture to Burn” at max volume. We felt so confident, knowing no one could ruin our mood after we had this therapeutic moment. The city at night is also so vibrant while everyone is asleep.

Having a film camera

I finally had the guts to spend a big chunk of money and invest in a film camera. It is such a different experience because film is so expensive, so you value every picture you take. Moreover, you don’t get to see the pictures until you use the whole roll and get it developed. If you mess up, you mess up. It’s a pricey lesson, but eventually, you will become really good at it.

Knowing how to flirt

As a girl, I have always been taught to wait for the guy’s action instead of chasing and getting him. I listened and I suffered. Recently, I finally tried to make the first move and flirted with someone. I don’t even know if it was a good flirt, but you know, I did it. I felt victorious. I overcame the social norm and was proud of myself. I love having the power to get what I want. I 100 percent recommend flirting to other shy girls. Do what you want and need. Don’t listen to other people. You know the situation, no one else does.

My friends

My friends don’t define my values, but without them, I would never ever know my values. The love they give me makes me feel wanted. In return, I help them with their problems. Maybe not much, but there has been some funny situations like boyfriend problems, and for a single girl, I think I do pretty well at helping them.

Living far away from my family

I know this is a debatable opinion. Personally, I love the freedom I have here in the dorms because my parents are really strict. Living with my roommate is fulfilling. We basically became each other’s family here because we are both far away from home. I have never laughed as much as I do at Jewell.

My family

Even when I love living on my own, I don’t think the love I feel for my family has changed. I think that when we are not together, our relationship gets better because we are more grateful to have each other to think about. We can also avoid crazy situations that would happen every day if we lived together. The thing I am most grateful for from my family is the support I get from them no matter how far the distance is between us. I know that I will always be there for them, and they will always be there for me. 

When I was younger, I went through a period of my life where I would wake up feeling more or less like garbage every day. My head constantly hurt, and I would frequently be unable to see out of my right eye because of the aura of my headaches. Not surprisingly, I was always tired, irritated, nauseous and had no appetite. 

This period of my life lasted a year. No matter how many painkillers I took, or how long I slept, my malaise had seemed to become a part of me. I began to learn how to cohabitate with it – how much time I could spend at the computer before my headache intensified from the blue light, etc., etc. 

While I was very acutely aware of the symptoms of my era of headaches, I could not have told you what had caused them. I didn’t even know whether my problem was really just headaches –  sometimes my head merely felt cotton-y, but my nausea was extreme. It was rather distressing. I tried to do my daily routine as strictly as possible, and still, the odd symptoms persisted. 

It turns out that my problem was chronic migraines. I had to go to a number of doctors and explain my disparate symptoms before one of them referred me to a neurologist, who promptly gave me this diagnosis. 

Finally, I had a name for the malaise. No longer was I like a feudal peasant plagued by some unknown demon. The problem then was what caused these migraines? Nothing in my life had changed significantly from one year to the next. I was living life as I normally did – or so I thought. 

My neurologist gave me some pretty sound advice – keep a log of any bad symptoms, in conjunction with what you did that day which may have potentially caused problems. Over time, you will amass a great body of data about the degree of pain, the location of the pain and the potential causes of the pain, such that you will eventually be able to narrow down precisely what the problem is. 

For me, the problem was stress. In hindsight, it was very obvious that my problem was stress. I was going through one of the most difficult years of my life. While I was keeping it together mentally, my body was rebelling against me, so to speak. I had become so alienated from my somatic experience that I would have been unable to pinpoint the cause of my “disparate” ailments had I not engaged in this systematic logging of my symptoms and the possible causes of them. 

I was too busy managing other things to pay attention to my body, and it was only when things became unbearable and I needed to be medicated that I finally decided that enough was enough. 

I’d say that, given the current political climate of our country, and the ongoing pandemic, most of us are pretty stressed out. I’d venture to say that we are so stressed out, we frequently forget to pay attention to the ways we feel, and what causes us to feel certain ways. We just accept that we feel bad and hope that it goes away because as college students, we do not particularly have time to entertain everyday maladies. 

I’d like to suggest that this mentality is fundamentally destructive of one’s health in the long-run, and that, in fact, because of this ongoing pandemic, it is even more crucial for us to learn to understand our body and its responses to external stimuli. 

This sounds like quite a chore. Where are we to find time and energy to closely monitor ourselves so that we can come to a better understanding of the ways in which our body functions? And anyway, we are not doctors, so the understanding we are going to come to is going to be necessarily limited. 

I capitulate to the second objection. It is quite true that most of us have little to no medical understanding, and, as such, our knowledge about potential causes for aches and pains is limited. We cannot accurately self-diagnose – and even if we were doctors, doctors cannot accurately self-diagnose either anyway. However, that does not mean that we cannot come to at least understand, at a very basic level, what the most likely cause of a pain could be. 

In fact, I would argue that as the embodied individual, we are in the best position to understand what could potentially have a direct negative effect on us. My neurologist could not have trailed me around all day and indicated to me my pain levels at different times. This is a practical impossibility and I am the only person who knows whether or not I am in pain. 

If I start to pay some minor attention to my symptoms – if I take one moment to sit down and think about potential variations in my day – I can usually come up with a pretty good idea of what happened. 

For example, one day I had a sore throat. By taking 10 minutes to think about my day and any potential changes to my routine or my environment, I realized that my sore throat had been caused by a change in the humidity. It was getting cold at William Jewell College, and that means that the air supports fewer water molecules, and my throat dried out. I remedied this by drinking extra water, and no more dry throat!

This introspection is made all the more easy by the plethora of apps created for the purposes of tracking your daily health. For my migraines, for example, I frequently used MigraineBuddy to analyze my headaches. 

I could have freaked out about my sore throat and determined that I had COVID-19 or perhaps throat cancer. But such fears would have been rather excessive. 

Still, one can quickly see the importance of being aware of one’s body during this pandemic. Say I had woken up with a sore throat and had just ignored it and went about my day. Perhaps the cause of my sore throat, which I would have discovered had I taken a moment to deliberate, was because I had come in contact with some new individuals on campus who were mask-less. I could have then taken the necessary precautions to ensure that I did not come in contact with anyone else and potentially spread disease. 

Thus, I suggest to everyone on campus – do not ignore your body! Aches and pains do not materialize out of thin air, nor do they always magically go away. It is important that we take time to be mindful of our bodies. Otherwise, we risk long-term damage and, in this pandemic, perhaps an increased rate of contagion.