I was trapped in a cycle of perpetual anxiety, laziness and procrastination for most of my life after high school. As a new graduate, I didn’t feel any motivation to immediately start college; I felt I had earned some deserved time off. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t made this decision, as it resulted in some dire consequences.
After high school, I realized that nothing is mandatory anymore. There’s no more showing up at 7 a.m. and seeing the same crowd of people; there’s no more soccer practice or student council meetings to attend. There’s only you and what you want to do, whether it’s immediately starting a job or beginning post-secondary education — as most people choose between one of these two routes. I chose the former, and I was happy with this decision. I jumped straight into a full-time job at a lumber yard working 12-hour days.
Do I regret this? No. That job provided me with the toughest physical and mental endurance I’ve ever experienced and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. If I could do things differently, I would have made sure to not work as many grueling hours and leave some time in my schedule to take college classes. Something I realize now, nearly four years after this time in my life, is that taking such a long break from school discouraged me from continuing my education after high school.
After about a year, I quit my job at the lumber yard and moved to Evansville, Indiana, where I rented a place with a few of my closest friends. Do I regret this? Yes. Do not under any circumstances move away from home without a safety net of some kind, such as a job or steady income, which I did not have at the time due to some severe issues with anxiety and a panic disorder.
The combination of an absence from school and a job made my life hectic — there was no structure. For those with experience with anxiety or related issues, structure is the name of the game. I lacked that structure at that time — I put my issues on the back burner and focused on trying to party and meet people as a way of coping with these intense feelings.
This stint ended with me having no money and no idea of what to do. I could barely drive, I could barely function due to crippling anxiety, and I was — for the first time in my life — lost. I tried doing some academic programs at various colleges over the years, but none of them stuck, and I dropped out multiple times. It turns out computer science isn’t for everybody. I knew school was where I belonged, though. I just didn’t know how to get there.
Eventually, I made the decision to add structure to my life. I started taking daily walks, I had a list of chores to do to help my mom out and I made sure to gradually expose myself to the outside world to make leaving the house easier. I wanted to commit to full-time school, and I had come to a point in my life where I finally felt ready because of the preparation I did with these little activities. Sometimes, the trick to getting out of bed is to just know you have something waiting for you outside your room. My pets weren’t going to feed themselves. I applied this same school of thought and my education — if I wasn’t going to do the work, who was?
I began my education at IU this spring and looking back at the strides I’ve made to get to where I am now, I finally feel accomplished. I put in the effort to get to where I am, and it came as a result of me not thinking, but just acting. It was the result of a simple question: what do I want to do in life? These decisions are easier said than done, obviously, but if I can do it, you can too. Everyone can do it, the only variable is the timing of realization.
Vincent Winkler (he/him) is a freshman studying sociology.
