[kplishere]

I thank you in advance if you read this.

I'm not the kind of person who prefers talking about his problems, although now I need your advice. I'm a freshman university student, learning computer engineering. So far, 5 weeks passed, and it's immensely exhausting. That is fine, this is what university education is about. I didn't expect anything else.

My problem is that I'm not feeling good enough to suceed on my tests and exams (so far I failed two and passed two, and I have three more next week), or even finish this course at all. Sometimes, I feel like I'm hopeless for two reasons:

A) I've got obsessive-compulsive disorder (it was diagnosed, but not extremely serious, thankfully) which makes focusing on one thing for a long time pretty difficult. It is said to affect the memorising process as well. I think so. I have a few compulsions and intrusive thoughts and I'm not able to get rid of them. They take up too much space in my short term memory that I feel like I can't actually learn anything properly. OCD also makes it harder to stay disciplined (I fail a lot of times), which would be vital during my university years. I'm already working on this with daily meditations. It helps me a little bit. I created a perfect daily routine and study plan, others say I am well-organised, yet I can't fulfill my urges and I'm staying unfocused. Roughly speaking, I feel like I'm a slave to my own brain, fighting with my own self all the time. Meanwhile, my friends are getting smarter around me.

B) Most of the students here are more clever than I am (I'm partly happy for this, as it means I'm surrounded with many great people). However, I need more time to understand the subjects than they do. This is because most of them took advanced maths/physics classes in secondary school. I didn't, because I never thought that computer engineering courses include this amount of maths lessons I have. Also, my former school didn't take too much pressure on me and my maths/physics education was quite poor compared to theirs. As a result, I lack some basic mathematics and physics knowledge (I actually find both subjects very interesting, and it bothers me so hard that I'm struggling with them).

I'm not planning to leave my university, because I have goals that include a degree of engineering. Of course, I'm willing to work for my dreams, I'm just feeling slightly lonely and hopeless.

In a nutshell, OCD makes my daily life uncomfortable and a bit difficult. In addition, I see how others have better understanding than I do and these things make me unhappy with my current situation.

My questions are:
How did you get over tough periods during your universoty years/life?
How do you fight with your inner self telling you to stop working?
What study techniques do you find the most efficient?
Do you have any suggestions for me on how should I behave to feel better?

Any help, advice is much appreciated!
Thank you!

[ficklebluebird]

I am in a similar position, although I do not have OCD. I do have intruisive thoughts that make it hard to study a lot of the time because that thought just trails on and on, or repeats itself.
1. Try different methods of studying. Sometimes I feel like learning from videos is easier for me, sometimes I feel like reading is easier, it just depends.
2. Talk to someone. Get help. You said you were diagnosed but have you been seeing someone. It's good to have someone you can let off steam to. At my university there's a counselling center that offers 45 min sessions for free. Enquire, you might find something there.
3. Meditate before studying or your exams. I do this. It really helps with focus and stress. You didn't say whether you're ding guided meditation or not ( I assume you are, but if not, I recommend it).
4. You are surrounded by people who are smarter than you which is great. Don't hesitate to ask for help. I'm sure they wouldn't mind spending a little extra time to help you out.

I hope this helps and I hope everything goes well.

[kplishere]

I am in a similar position, although I do not have OCD. I do have intruisive thoughts that make it hard to study a lot of the time because that thought just trails on and on, or repeats itself.
1. Try different methods of studying. Sometimes I feel like learning from videos is easier for me, sometimes I feel like reading is easier, it just depends.
2. Talk to someone. Get help. You said you were diagnosed but have you been seeing someone. It's good to have someone you can let off steam to. At my university there's a counselling center that offers 45 min sessions for free. Enquire, you might find something there.
3. Meditate before studying or your exams. I do this. It really helps with focus and stress. You didn't say whether you're ding guided meditation or not ( I assume you are, but if not, I recommend it).
4. You are surrounded by people who are smarter than you which is great. Don't hesitate to ask for help. I'm sure they wouldn't mind spending a little extra time to help you out.

I hope this helps and I hope everything goes well.

As I mentioned, I don't often talk to people about this, but maybe you're right. I think I'll give it a try and look around if we have the same facility here. I indeed do ding meditations, but only in the mornings. Haven't tried before studying yet, but certainly next time.
I'll take your advice, thank you! Hope you do well too.

[Rajj]

I never saw anyone to be officially diagnosed, but I struggled with alot of the same symptoms during my freshman and sophomore years that you're experiencing now. The first thing that you need to realize is that many people tend to lose their confidence once they start taking the difficult classes required for a computer engineering track. College requires alot more work outside of the classroom than high school, and it can be difficult to anyone to adjust even without OCD.

I'm not all the way through my degree yet but so far I've found some things that have improved my performance significantly. I struggled alot with my inner self telling me to stop working and the best way that I've found to deal with this is just changing gears a little bit when this starts to happen. If I've been studying for one class for a while and I'm starting to feel burnt out, I take a quick break and then start working on a completely different class.

If you're really struggling with motivation it's even more important for you to make some connections. You said you're surrounded by great people, so try to link up with one of them to help keep yourself focused, this will help get rid of some of the distractions if you're both committed to getting some work done.

I also like to keep a list of all the assignments and work that is due, chapters that need to be read, and things that I would just like to learn about outside of the classroom. These don't have to be done in any specific order but it can help you to stay on task and get some work done instead of just sitting around wondering what you should do next. Crossing things off is almost like a short-term goal that leaves me really satisfied for the moment.

If your basic mathematics and physics knowledge is lacking its very important that you improve on those before you're thrown into higher level classes. Your university will probably require you to go through some basic classes on these topics anyway, but it doesn't hurt to start building your basic skills up outside of the classroom now and get an early start. Try to keep this in the back of your head and if you can get all of your current classwork done, look up some resources and be proactive in your learning of these topics. Textbooks provide invaluable knowledge but there are probably some great internet sources out there for these topics too, so just do some research on it.

Good luck with your degree and don't give up when it gets tough!

[kplishere]

Hi Rajj,
thank you so much for your answer. I'm so happy some random HF users take a few minutes from of life and reply to my thread.

You said you're surrounded by great people, so try to link up with one of them to help keep yourself focused, this will help get rid of some of the distractions if you're both committed to getting some work done.

Today, I went to the library with a guy who helped me a lot with calculus. Connections++.

Crossing things off is almost like a short-term goal that leaves me really satisfied for the moment.

I reorganised my to-do list.

If your basic mathematics and physics knowledge is lacking its very important that you improve on those before you're thrown into higher level classes. Your university will probably require you to go through some basic classes on these topics anyway.

That's right, I take crash courses of maths and physics. I'll see if they worth it.

I never saw anyone to be officially diagnosed.

I just had to talk with a psychologist, it took like 20 minutes. Then he printed a sheet of paper, stating that certain things trigger OCD in me. That's all.

Good luck with your degree and don't give up when it gets tough!

Same to you man and thanks again!

[webdev77]

My questions are:
How did you get over tough periods during your university years/life?
How do you fight with your inner self telling you to stop working?
What study techniques do you find the most efficient?
Do you have any suggestions for me on how should I behave to feel better?

I'll answer this because it seems you genuinely do care.

1. It takes time to get through it. For me at least, time is the only true healer of anguish. I've had some extremely rough patches that I'm not proud of and can attest that your mental toughness will be pushed to your limits and beyond. It's how you deal with it that will make the difference. My best advice is to get out and spend time with other people even if it means taking a break and sacrificing grades a little bit. Don't get me wrong, grades are important, but so is mental health. You will remember your real friends long after you forget the horrible times.

2. Not well enough. My inner self won out. Until I constantly was taking drugs so that I could be functional human being instead of a walking zombie with the plague from lack of sleep. Know when to stop and take a break. It's not worth getting sick over stupid crap that you won't need to know 6 months later.

3. I have never in my life been good at studying. I'll let someone else answer that. My studying methods included paging through notes for an hour or two and then showing up and slogging through exams.

4. To feel better is easy. To keep your grades up and feel better is hard. Learn to find the proper balance between leisure and school work. There must be a few hours a week where you get a mental break. If you aren't taking this time, you are probably being highly inefficient in your school work anyways. It's sometimes a time saver to take a break and come back to it later instead of bashing your head into the desk for the time in between.

[kplishere]

Thank you for your answer. It helped me through the day.

[ethelooking]

Personally, the activities I pursued outside lecture hall taught me valuable lessons and skills that I would have otherwise never had the opportunity to challenge and hone had I stayed holed up with my books on the fifth floor of my campus library.