My anxieties as a college student and what’s helping me endure them.

Written by Cole Mumper

I was walking down the forested path to the Fairhaven dining hall for lunch, reminiscing about my time at Western Washington University before the pandemic, when I suddenly remembered how I used to skip down the same path every day.

Since I was a kid, everyone I knew told me how I skipped everywhere I went. Now, I mostly walk everywhere, and it’s hard for me to remember any recent times that I’ve skipped anywhere. This caused me to realize the anxiety that has built up inside me during the pandemic.

Anxiety for me is nothing new, nor for my peers. TimelyMD found that only 45% of Generation Z, people born between 1997 and 2012, reported positive mental health, 11% lower than what millennials reported.

I’ve always had a tendency to get riled up by things such as a show I was watching becoming too dramatic, or when my dog starts happily barking away because my parents just got home. There are also my concerns about climate change, student loan debt, being able to get a job after college, and housing that swirl through my mindscape.

Before the pandemic, I had some confidence that these issues would be addressed or that perhaps I would find a way to overcome these obstacles in the future. I am not so sure of that anymore. The Journal of Medical Internet Research found that 71% of the 195 students surveyed had increased stress or anxiety from the pandemic.

This shift first started for me in mid-2020 with the horrific murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed. The hunt for justice felt like a fever dream. There were also the brutal interactions between peaceful protestors, who only wanted to be treated as human beings, and the police. This re-awakened my social concerns with society, and these events signified that 2020 was becoming worse for me.

When I was born, my late grandpa created a college account for me. It paid for all of my student expenses at Western over the last three years. However, about two months ago, I found out that the account will run out of money after my 2021 fall quarter. I still need to go to college for at least one more quarter in order to graduate. This means that I will have to apply for a student loan — the same type of loan that has saddled countless people with thousands of dollars of nondischargeable debt. This prospect has amplified my fears about being unable to get a job or housing after college.

The moment I realized the fund was running out of money, I was absolutely horrified.

It felt as if my worst future had just started to manifest before me. I still remember how anxious I felt about it and how I would regularly talk to my parents about how worried I was.

Even with all of these anxieties, I was still able to find joy in day-to-day life through activities such as drawing or playing games, such as Yu-Gi-Oh!. Some of the strategies I use for this are doing no school on Saturdays unless absolutely necessary so I can have at least one day off to myself every week, and also giving myself breaks in schoolwork. I am also passionate about art and have been making an effort to draw every single day.

Ever since I was a kid, I enjoyed drawing. If you look at any notebook I ever had for school, you’ll find countless doodles in the margins. Drawing gives my mind a sense of peace and a chance to wander, acting as a medium for expression wherein words would be insufficient; drawing is a great outlet for me to escape from the troubles of the world.

Although part of my strategy to deal with anxiety is to find opportunities to enjoy myself, I also talk about my anxiety with friends and family whenever I feel overwhelmed by my anxieties. While staying at home with my parents in particular, I regularly talked about my anxieties with my mom.

Even though these strategies work for me, I cannot pretend that they will work for everyone else as a one-shoe-fits-all solution or that it will be available to everyone. We all have our own circumstances and the solution for one problem won’t necessarily work for another, and not everyone has the same resources and luxuries that I take for granted.

Although our current situation is absolutely terrifying, it is more than OK to be anxious or nervous about the state of the future. This story may have focused on my anxieties, but that does not make the struggles and anxieties that you have faced any less valid. You may feel alone right now, but at the end of the day, we are all in this together, and together, we can overcome these struggles.