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Thursday, March 28, 2024

College anxiety is smothering freshman retention rates

I recently read in The New York Times that 30 percent of college freshmen do not return for their sophomore year. Thirty percent. Think about that. That’s nearly a third of all freshmen. And I don’t even blame them. College is extraordinarily stressful.

In high school, I convinced myself that college would cure my mental illnesses. I would no longer have seven classes per day, hours of homework each night and I could sleep in past 5 a.m. Finally! Plenty of rest and a wide-open schedule. My stress would vanish, right? Wrong. So, so wrong.

Getting to college is like being in the audience of The Oprah Winfrey Show, except instead of a car, everyone in the audience gets crippling anxiety as their prize. You get anxiety! And you get anxiety! You all get crippling anxiety! Oprah, we didn’t ask for this. We just wanted a good time. Geez.

According to Dr. Robert Leahy of Psychology Today, the average teenager in 2008 had the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient of the ‘50s. Keep in mind, that statistic was from 10 years ago. I guess we’re now worse off than psychological patients from the middle of the 20th century. These levels of stress are absurd, and just about every aspect of college fuels this anxiety.

And it isn’t just anxiety that plagues college students. We’re riddled with a litany of mental health issues. In fact, I can’t think of one friend of mine who hasn’t struggled with some form of mental illness, be it anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, et-cetera. If you’re not internally suffering, are you even a young adult?

In college, most activities require some level of competition. College itself is harder to get into than when our parents were applying, and the average high schooler today takes far more Advanced Placement classes than our parents ever took, partially because most AP classes didn’t exist in the ‘80s, and partially because college admissions require so much of us. Many college activities such as clubs, organizations and jobs require applications, which is understandable, but being denied from everything you apply to your first semester freshman year can be disheartening.

College, as great as it is, can be a bit disappointing. We grow up with the notion that these are supposed to be our glory days, whether from movies, songs or our parents excitedly ushering us off to their alma maters. I naively expected to have plenty of friends, be an active member of nearly every club and to have my future set in stone. Spoiler alert: None of that happened. In fact, I spent nearly my entire first semester in my dorm, in my bed, in the dark, alone. I had not yet met anyone or branched out. I had been denied from organizations and most definitely did not have my future set in stone (still don’t). I figured for sure I was the only one who felt this way. People around me seemed so happy to be here; why was I depressed?

One thing I can definitively say is that people’s presentations on social media are an utter farce. People are only going to post things that make their life appear exciting, so avoid social media at all costs. I would also venture to say that most everyone has no idea what they want to study or even what they want to be when they grow up, so don’t put so much pressure on yourself to find out.

College freshmen are thrown into a new environment with unfamiliar people with the expectation that this is supposed to be the greatest time of our life. While it certainly can be a great time, this is a lot of pressure, and when we don’t meet the mark, we blame ourselves, inciting a cycle of depression. In some ways, I’m surprised it’s only 30 percent of freshmen who don’t return. What’s most important is to be open and earnest — remind one another that we’re not alone in our suffering.

Hannah Whitaker is a UF English sophomore. Her column appears on Mondays.

 

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