This post was written by peer advisor Lydia Gleaves, a junior in SEAS, studying mechanical engineering with a concentration in robotics.
Do you remember the year that you learned to write in cursive? They probably told you that you would always have to use cursive in the real world. Odds are, you don’t write exclusively in cursive nowadays. What about the eighth grade, when they told you that high school was going to be so much harder? For some of us, high school came just as easily as anything else ever did.
Now think about when they told you that college was the real deal, the big game you’d been training for all this time. It was going to be so stressful and so hard. But the same people telling you that also told you you’d always write in cursive and that English I was going to wreck your world freshman year of high school. So why would you believe them? Hah, nothing gets past you.
So then you’re here at GW, and you’re thinking, Wow, this is pretty easy. I know this stuff! And you do, because it’s syllabus week and everything is review. But slowly, it starts to get a little harder. And a little harder. And suddenly, you don’t even understand what the professor is saying (and not because of his accent or her handwriting – because you just can’t get it). And then maybe you find yourself in the back of a Thermodynamics classroom with tears running down your face while your friends raptly take notes from a professor who is steadfastly refusing to make eye contact with you. (That one might just be me?)
College is hard. Everyone hits a wall at some point. Maybe you failed a quiz, or maybe you cried in class, or maybe you cried during the quiz that you failed.
“If you’re not already familiar with it, you will be.”
I study mechanical engineering, which means I’m currently taking Introduction to the Mechanisms of Solids, where we’re learning about stress, and Fluid Mechanics, where we work a lot with pressure. Both stress and pressure are equal to a force over an area (P = σ = F / A). They make pretty great metaphors for the college experience. College puts you under plenty of stress and pressure, and we can use concepts from solids and fluids to learn to minimize that stress and that pressure.
“I don’t know what the metaphorical units could possibly be; just ignore those.”
The “force” F in the college/life equation is anything that weighs down on you (that’s kind of a pun, I think I get half credit for that). That could be homework, studying for midterms, picking a major, any of a variety of physical or mental health issues, missing your parents, getting busy with student orgs, missing your friends, the major process that is finding who you truly are, etc.
The “area” A is your support system. If it’s just you, that’s a tiny area. If it’s you and a friend, that’s better, that’s getting bigger. Sometimes there are only a few forces weighing down, so you don’t need such a big area. Sometimes, though, there are a lot of forces on you, and you need a much larger area; in that case, someone at the University Counseling Center could help you increase your area with a workshop, a one-off appointment, or recurring visits.
So you take those forces and apply them over an area. Maybe you have five forces: parents, money, girlfriend, Foster’s econ, and CHEM 1111. If the area is one, just lil ole you, that’s still a stress or pressure of 5/1, or FIVE. That’s so high! But then we bring in a couple of friends, lean on your big brother, and learn a new way to keep track of your time (i.e. pen and paper, like we’re elderly). Suddenly, your area is five, too, and then the stress is just 5/5 equals ONE. Way more manageable.
This may be the nerdiest thing I’ve ever written, and you may be slightly embarrassed if someone catches you reading it in public, but I hope that you get the point I’m trying to make here. College is hard, but with a strong support system and some core skills for dealing with tough times, it can get a lot less stressful.
