How do you take care of yourself when you're overwhelmed with college?

“Overwhelming” doesn’t fully summarize the last several years.

The end of your high school years was not at all what anybody could have anticipated.

The start of your college years wasn’t either.

Whether you’re near midterms or finals, you’re likely feeling even a little more overwhelmed. 

Assignments, papers, and presentations are all piling up. You feel more physically tired than you’ve maybe ever felt, and your mind feels just as exhausted. What can you do?

Below are 3 tips for prioritizing your health when you’re feeling overwhelmed at college!

Prioritize your health.

If you’re a student who loves socializing more than anything, you might find prioritizing your health challenging.

If you’re a student who is determined to earn perfect grades, you also might find prioritizing your health challenging.

Why might both of these types of students find prioritizing health challenging? 

• It means saying “no” to things we enjoy. After a long day of classes, you might be quick to hang out with friends or keep plugging away with your studies. Both actions can be good at times, but if you’re feeling completely overwhelmed you may only feel more overwhelmed and exhausted if you don’t first take a break.

• It means saying “no” to bad habits. Sometimes freshmen can form bad habits like completing one assignment and then spending an hour scrolling through TikTok. While this method of taking breaks may help relieve your stress temporarily, it likely isn’t helping you finish homework and get to bed early.

• It means saying “no” to coping mechanisms. We all have different coping mechanisms that we use to deal with our stress. Even good coping mechanisms can become bad coping mechanisms when they’re out of balance. Refusing to binge with any particular coping mechanism can help you better prioritize your health.

So how can college freshmen prioritize their health and what does it look like?

Prioritizing health will look different for different people. 

Some people can keep going and going with less sleep and little socializing. Others need many hours of sleep and a lot of alone time.

In general, here are a few things that make a big difference for most college freshmen:

• Getting good sleep: Sometimes getting little or no sleep becomes a “badge of honor” among college freshmen. While functioning off of sleep-deprived adrenaline can give you a sense of accomplishment, you will likely find you burn out quickly. Most experts recommend college students get at least 7+ hours of sleep in order to stay healthy.

• Eating nutritionally: Eating can be inconvenient or even a nuisance when you’re a busy college freshman. Without proper “fuel,” you cannot perform well on your schoolwork. Most experts agree that consuming recommended amounts of fruits, vegetables, and meat can help keep your mind and body healthy.

• Taking small, regular breaks: Streaming services may impact how we consume content and relax as well. “Binging” relaxation though may not be the best way to approach finding balance as a college freshman. Instead, taking small breaks throughout the day may better help you prioritize your health. (Try using the Pomodoro technique. Read about it in this post!)

Set boundaries that work for you.

Setting boundaries is a key skill for college and beyond.

Without boundaries, you will find yourself easily burnt-out and unable to show up at your best.

Setting them, unfortunately, means enduring some unpleasant results:

• Disappointing others: Friends, roommates, and even teachers may not understand why you have to turn in assignments late or earn an occasional zero. But sometimes this disappointing others is what is needed to set a boundary for your health.

• Disapproval from others: Sometimes your parent(s), teachers, and other authority figures may disagree with you needing to quit an extracurricular or drop a class. But sometimes disapproval from others is less important than your health.

• Missing out on socializing: Your friends, peers, and roommates may pressure you to socialize when you know you need sleep or food. They might make fun of you or feel frustrated by you turning down opportunities to socialize. But sometimes you need to spend time alone sleeping, reading, or simply enjoying some quiet time.

These downsides to setting boundaries may be “hard to swallow” but they shouldn’t deter you from doing so.

So what does it look like to set boundaries and what might be some healthy boundaries to set? Here are a few ideas:

• Socializing on weeknights: Not socializing on a weeknight might sound radical, but when you’re in the middle of a busy semester you typically will not have much free time during the week. Beyond studying with a friend, eating a meal with a friend, or exercising with a friend, you may not have time to spend socializing.

• Staying up past midnight: Many students stay up until the early of the morning on a regular basis. The idea of even going to bed before midnight seems impossible, but it isn’t. You may have to make the decision to stop whatever you’re doing and go to bed by midnight in order to survive this semester. Even if this means turning in work late, this may be the best habit you form.

Be okay with less than perfect.

Many freshmen feel pressure to earn perfect grades, have perfect friendships, be the perfect roommate, and more.

But perfectionism really isn’t possible, because we’re all flawed.

Doing less than your absolute best can be a hard thing to accept. Why? You want to excel at everything that comes across your path.

But I’d like to argue that our best looks different at different times. 

Sometimes our best looks like earning a high A on an assignment. Sometimes our best looks like turning in an assignment by the due date.

While you may want to function at 100% all the time, this isn’t possible all the time. And that’s okay.

While not every student needs to be reminded to “take it easy,” some students do. 

So how do you know if you’re a student who needs to be this reminder? Here are some signs:

• You find your worth in your grades. This is an easy pitfall, but finding your value in how well you perform in your academics can be a dangerous precedent to set. You are more than a student, so your value shouldn’t solely be found in your performance as a student.

• You mentally “beat yourself up.” If you regularly find yourself talking unkindly about yourself to yourself, you’re probably acting like your own bully. This only hurts you and makes it harder for you to improve. (Additionally, you might want to consider seeing a counselor to find better ways to regulate your behavior or adjust your expectations.)

• You hold yourself to impossibly high standards. If you struggle with perfectionism, you likely also struggle with holding yourself to impossibly high standards. Talk to any goal-setting expert and they will advise you to set attainable goals if you want to experience success. 

When you’re feeling overwhelmed, your health may not be “top of mind.”

You might feel like you don’t have time to take care of yourself, but the reality is that you’re creating habits now that will help you function after college too.

While your health might not seem incredibly important to you now, it's what sustains you.

Making the right kinds of habits now can help you stay healthy for many years to come, so work on it now.