What I Wish I Knew in First Year

Hey there! My name is JC Caramillo and I am currently a candidate for a Bachelor of Health Sciences with a concentration in Biomedical Sciences and a minor in Disability Studies – it’s a long title, I know. Last academic year, I was working with Health Promotion as a placement student and I’ll be returning as a Health Promotion Team Leader for the current academic year. I’m ecstatic to be providing my knowledge and wisdom with you, especially since this will my final year at Carleton University!

With four years of postsecondary education under my belt, I now wish I had a time machine to go back and provide the old JC with tools in order to benefit his health and wellness. Alas, this is not (currently) possible so I hope you can utilize them yourself.

My first piece of wisdom would be to find an outlet. No, not an outlet where you plug your laptop in to charge or your kettle to make a cup of tea – an outlet for your emotions, specifically your negative ones. Bombarded with the stress of moving to a new city, making new friends, and entering my first year of university, I had no emotional outlet. Obviously, this got to me as evident by my poor academic performance and questionable lifestyle choices. It turns out that binging shows on Netflix and sleeping through class due to said binging of shows on Netflix didn’t facilitate my education and knowledge, who knew? I’ve since started practicing yoga and meditation in order to process my negative emotions and make the hard days easier. Now, I’m not saying you should order a yoga mat on Amazon and try levitating, I’m just saying that this works for me. From person to person, strategies to cope with negative emotions are different. Some may go out for a walk or a run, others may listen to music (my favourite song is So Into You by Tamia), and others may light a candle and sink into a bath. There’s a whole lot of emotional outlets out there, I’m certain you’ll find one that benefits your wellness! If you need more ideas, check out available sources on Verywell Mind‘s website.

My second piece of wisdom is to reach out. I know that life can get stressful, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic, but know that there are people who you can reach out to. During my first year of university, I never reached out to anyone for help because I thought I could push through by myself. Reach out to a parent, a sibling, a friend, a roommate, or a professor, even. If you don’t feel comfortable reaching out to those people, there are a lot of resources for you to utilize. To access these resources, visit Carleton’s official website. I recently started asking for help from people close to me, it was a sense of relief to know that I don’t have to get through the hard days by myself and that people were there for me. If you find yourself in this situation, I hope you reach out and find the same sense of relief that I found. I know asking for help is hard, but you have to try.

My last piece of advice is to not overwork yourself. Though, I say this with hesitancy as I am still guilty of this. When we expect too much from ourselves, we are bound to fail. It seems as if any sense of failure erases any sense of victory. For example, if you had aimed to do five-out-of-five items on your to-do list but only completed three, you may be upset at yourself for not completing the other two goals. But let’s reframe this by telling ourselves, “You finished more than half of what you set yourself up to do!,” and congratulate ourselves. Your next step would be to re-evaluate our next to-do list and ensure that the workload is reasonable. In my personal experience, I get discouraged when I fail to meet my unreasonable standards then tire myself out when I try to compensate for my missed goals the next day. Next time you make your to-do list, remember REACH, which stands for Reasonable Expectations At Carleton Help. I just made that up, but it really does make sense. During your time at Carleton University, setting yourself up to meet reasonable expectations will help you reach your goals and succeed. So, as homework, make practicing REACH an item on your to-do list!

I hope that these three pieces of advice help you with your journey at Carleton University. It’s always hard at the beginning of the semester, especially since summer mode seems to stretch until mid- to late- September, but you’ll get your head there soon enough!