By Yesenia Pineda
It creeps, it crawls, and it makes your skin fall with chilling fear and blistering tears. Everywhere and nowhere at the same time, anxiety comes in like an uninvited guest of the mind.
Like any other time, college has a massive butterfly effect on students and teachers, not only with students doing coursework and many side jobs, but also teachers with their day–to–day lives and class. While dealing with anxiety is no easy task and managing daily livelihood, it really does change now more than ever, especially with having online classes while in college.
“It was chaotic! I was new to MC and I had never taken an online class before, so I didn’t really understand how everything was going to work. I was especially worried about online classes having less built-in structure,” said first–year student Ezra Gross.
With a pandemic in our midst, speaking with friends, family, certified professionals and associates seems different, like really different. Just like students, professors deal with anxiety on a daily basis along with their private life and class combined, but that doesn’t mean they’re immune to moments of stress overload.
“When I begin to feel overwhelmed in my personal or professional life [it] has helped me to seek outlets to shift my mind to something else while the angst decreases,” said communications professor Ashla Hill Roseboro. For both students and professors, stress and anxiety can linger longer than semesters and well into daily activities.
“I know it’s time for a break when I’m not able to be productive. When I’m trying to read my textbook, but the words aren’t combining to make coherent thoughts, or when I’m staring blankly at a document instead of writing, it’s time to stop,” added Gross.
Anxiety is a difficult aspect for anyone’s life and lingers longer than both fall and spring semesters but for those small moments of peace and calmness, the world relaxes, and it seems like normality is close. For both students and teachers, anxiety isn’t something they can simply sweep under the rug, and believe me I’ve tried, but finding those people to talk to, methods of relaxing, calming lo-fi tracks on YouTube or Spotify really makes the world go round, especially with learning new ways to improve self-care.
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