• Sophomore
• Double major in Marine Biology and Secondary education

“I think mental health is extremely important when it comes to school. If your mental health isn’t good then you are not going to be in the right mindset to learn. If you have good mental health then you can be focused on learning, but as we learned in one of my education classes if your brain is in “survival mode” then it will only focus on keeping you alive and won’t be able to absorb new information. That’s one of the biggest reasons that I think mental health is so important because it directly affects your ability to do schoolwork. This is why I personally try to make sure I have a healthy balance between school and social life but it does get pretty tricky because I tend to hyper-focus on my classes or if I’m relaxing I feel like I’m slacking off or not doing enough. Living on campus can make it hard to step away from your schoolwork but it’s important to take that time away because otherwise you will get too burnt out. I would say the phrase [never miss out on opportunities] means to me to say yes to new things, even if they don’t align perfectly with your major or what was expected, I’ve said yes to a lot of things on campus or applied for things outside my comfort zone and everything I’ve learned so much from it. 

I normally try to do a lot of my schoolwork during the school day and leave the nights for relaxing or being with friends and then take time on the weekends to do something fun. I found in my time the consoling services and SASC were able to help, they are not able to help everyone but I found so far that they were good to talk to a good starting place when reaching out for help when it comes to resources around campus.  Remember that you are a person before a student, destroying your body and mental health to do well in school won’t aid you in the long run, and sometimes it’s more important to turn an assignment in late or skip a class to help your own mental health and be in the right mindset then to go and not understand anything because your brain was stressed.”