Advice to First-Day-of-School Me
By: Johan Dominguez
Tags: College, Learning

My first semester of college is almost over; the only thing stopping me from sleeping in, relaxing, and playing video games is the finals I have to take. Thankfully, I’m not too stressed about them. College overall, however, was a mixture of stressful nights, mental breakdowns, last minute essays, and moments of burnout — you know, the college starter pack. Looking back, I’ve experienced a lot of new things in college that I didn’t think I would be experiencing, such as burnout. There are some things I wish I could have known about the college experience when I first started college. So, here’s a list of things that present Johan would have told First-Day-of-School Johan about the college experience.

Burnout is a nightmare

For those that have no clue what burnout is, burnout is “a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress.” In other words, it’s when you do so much work, have so much stress, and are so physically/emotionally drained, you just… can’t anymore. I experienced this in high school sometimes, but it would be short spells, maybe a day or two. College just makes the spells last a lot longer. I was doing all right until the beginning of November (two weeks before Thanksgiving break) when I started to feel tired. I would have my laptop with tabs opened to do different assignments, but I would just stare blankly at the screen for half an hour, wondering what am I even doing? That’s when I realized, burnout had hit me like a truck. I tried to sleep it off, but since I had morning classes and never actually slept early, I was always sleepy and tired. I had zero motivation to do schoolwork. Burnout led to me procrastinating, resulting in me only having motivation to do it the day that it was due. It took a while to get out of this state, and I wish I could have known how bad burnout really was, and how it would have affected me and my schoolwork.

Importance of time management

I’ve constantly mentioned how important time management is. If you don’t know already, IT’S VERY IMPORTANT. However, I still went back to my ways of procrastinating. At first, I was doing a great job of breaking the habit. But as time went on, I slowly went back to procrastinating. Now I’m here, doing some last-minute work instead of studying for exams. Even though I know how important it is to not procrastinate, breaking that habit is a lot harder said than done. Time management is an important skill I wish I could improve on as I continue with college. I wish I could tell First-Day-of-School me that doing work is more important than watching TikToks and Baby Yoda on Disney +. However, experiencing the consequences of poor time management seems like the only way I’ll begin to learn how important it is to manage my time wisely.

Taking advantage of school resources

Kennesaw State provides a wide variety of resources for students to become successful. For example, I know I’m not that good at writing essays. Kennesaw has a place called the Writing Center, where there are people there to help you write your essays. From how to start your essay to making sure there are no grammatical errors, they are there to help you. Kennesaw also has a huge gym if you want to work out. Things like the gym are covered by your tuition, so you don’t have to pay additional fees to go. If I had gone to the Writing Center, my essays would probably have been a lot better. Next semester, I will definitely be taking advantage of these resources, but I wish I had done so sooner.

Having your “Me” time and self-care

Making time for yourself and actually taking care of yourself is one of the most important things you’re never told to do. Rarely are people reminded that they should take care of themselves. Self-care is so important to a person. If you don’t take care of yourself, you end up stressing, having anxiety or panic attacks, and sometimes have negative thoughts or driving yourself to depression. Sometimes if you’re feeling overwhelmed, just take a break, it’s ok. There have been multiple times where I was trying to do homework while fighting the urge to shut down, but I forced myself to keep going. That wasn’t very smart because then the urges would just come back stronger than before. It’s 100% ok to shut down. Take the time you need to shut down, the compose yourself, and finish your work. Taking care of yourself makes sure you are ok, and that you are happy. Taking “me” time and taking care of yourself is something I wish I had done.

If someone could give me a time machine, I’d go back to the first day of college and tell me everything I know. But sadly I can’t, so I’ll just try to use what I know now and improve my future self.