I Tried to Triple-Major and My Nervous System Said "Peace Out"

Move-in chaos, existential questions, and three majors in one week. Here's how I hit the college panic button and finally learned the art of slowing down.

So college started… Yeah, that happened. The whole move-in thing with the dorms, the boxes, the rugby players carrying your fridge, the whole works. Of course not to mention meeting a bunch of new people, and that infamous question of “what’s your major?” I don’t think I’ve ever met so many people in one day. Like ever.

Turns out, as much as I wished I could, you can’t major in three things without stressing yourself out so much that your first week is spent in the study rooms rather than parties. Chronic overachievers, do you feel me here?

Starting college, I felt unprepared. I had spent my time researching my classes and wondering if I was smart enough. I obsessed over the Rate my Professor profiles, wondering if the academic workload would take over me and if my professor would talk lecture about monkeys the whole time (he did not, he’s fantastic).

After the first week, I realized that coming into college as a triple major was a little too ambitious, and my nervous system said “peace out, I can not do this right now.” I was stressed, tired, barely making time for self-care, and constantly overworking myself. So I needed a reset, but how could I do that with all my classes?

Introducing The Art of Actually Slowing Down and Not Living in The Study Rooms, my new writing series where I talk honestly and humorously about the struggles and highlights of being a college student. Let’s start by what I’m doing to take my (much needed) break.

I started with three things that helped me immediately find some peace

1. Rekindling my love for creating - hence this post and the massive updates to my website.

2. The beauty of the add/drop period.

3. Daily gratitude practice.

Rekindling my love for creating

After living in the study rooms and the library, I decided to take a step back and begin creating again. I spent 2 days working on my creative portfolio; adding new poetry, photography, and backgrounds to the site. Eventually, it got to the point where I’m okay with it (which is a lot for me to say given I am a massive perfectionist).

Along with this, I downloaded Substack again, something that I had previously deleted because, in my exact words “I need to lock in and become an academic girly or else I will fail college and never become a pediatric nurse.” Yikes… But can you tell I’m Gen Z?

The beauty of the add/drop period

Like I mentioned before, juggling 3 majors is not a sport that I am particularly fond of, nor am I particularly fond of juggling in the first place, unless I’m tossing around a bunch of iced coffees and chocolate screaming “I can’t survive without an iced mocha!”

So turns out I needed to drop a couple classes, no biggie! Although I, rather unrealistically, wasn’t expecting needing to drop some classes, after I clicked the terrifying button I was overwhelmed with relief.

Daily gratitude practice

If you know anything about me, you would know that I am particularly fond of gratitude. Before college you could probably have caught me sitting outside at sunset with a notebook and pen, hurriedly writing down all of the millions of things that I am thankful for.

When college started I didn’t journal once. This came as a surprise to me because as a writer I don’t just journal about gratitude, I journal every little infuriating and beautiful part of my day to day life into one of my many notebooks. Those pages hold so much lore, it’s kind of ridiculous at this point.

After dropping some classes I picked up this gratitude practice again. Calmness and peace filled me body as I wrote down all of the beautiful parts about my day. Finally I could rest without nightmares of late assignments, and it was only a week into the term!

Lesson learned: don’t juggle. I’m choosing peace over perfection, and gratitude over gregarious assignments. Stick around for the next post in The Art of Actually Slowing Down where I dive deeper into the ups and downs of college.