How I found my place at UConn 

I graduated high school in June 2023 and it almost didn’t happen. Due to a combination of mental health struggles which reached a fever pitch in my senior year, I failed most of my classes that year. In the end, I graduated with a GPA of 2.15 after two weeks of sleepless nights making up just enough work to pass my required classes. For my entire academic career up to that point, school was a constant struggle. Not for lack of comprehension, but because every facet of my personality and the way my brain functioned were incompatible with a K-12 learning environment. OCD, ADHD and a general struggle to fit in socially all made what should’ve been an opportunity to learn and develop as a person a constant struggle. All the way until I finally stepped up onto the stage to receive my diploma, some part of me refused to believe I could do it. All of this is to say, graduating was a massive relief. Even with this relief, however, I still felt the weight of my academic challenges. I knew that, come spring 2024, I would be back in an academic environment at my local community college. At that time, I thought that meant I would be facing the same struggles I did in high school, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.  

When I started at community college, for the first time in my life, I felt like I could sustain success. The simple assignments that once felt impossible to motivate myself to complete were now easy and routine. The constant fight to stay caught up with work disappeared, and I was finally able to work on self-improvement rather than just survival. I completed that first semester with A’s in both classes I took. Soon, though, I began to feel that this was not enough. Although I was much happier than before, I lacked opportunities to make friends in a community college environment. For the most part, I saw my classmates in class only, never having the opportunity to interact with them outside of a classroom. I further realized this fact when I visited my friend at UMass. Just as community college had shown me what I could achieve academically, this visit showed me what I could achieve socially in the right environment. By the time I arrived home from UMass, I had decided I wanted to go to a four-year college.  

Over the winter break, I worked with advisors to choose my spring semester classes and prepare myself as best I could to begin applying to colleges. Though I kept working towards my goal, some of the familiar problems of high school began to reappear. With my closest friend several states away and my newfound awareness of just how much social interaction I was missing out on, I started to feel demotivated and feared that my previous two semesters may have been anomalies and that the depression that I had dealt with in high school was returning. By the end of the Spring 2025 semester, I had dropped two classes and failed two classes, only passing one. Despite this, however, I managed to get accepted to several of the schools I applied to, and after touring Storrs, I chose UConn.  

When I arrived here in August, I had no idea where to begin. Though I had spent almost the past year thinking of nothing but what I would do once I finally arrived at college, I had somehow failed to actually plan for it. I had a general idea of how to handle the academic aspect, but living on campus for the first time, I was lost when it came to actually making the friends I had come here to make. Fortunately, I had a few ideas for where to start. In the freshman issue of The Daily Campus, one of the articles offering advice for incoming students recommended writing for the newspaper. So, I decided that would be my first goal. I went to the first opinion pitch meeting of the year, and for the first time at UConn, I found a place where I felt comfortable interacting with other people. Slowly, I became more comfortable where I was, and though I still wasn’t entirely where I wanted to be socially, I now had a path forward and an idea of how to make friends and find community. I found even further opportunities to develop friendships after joining the Formula SAE team. It was a place where I could meet people who shared my interest in motorsports and engineering, and it proved to be the perfect place for me. I was able to explore topics that I had long wanted to explore with people who could offer helpful feedback and perspective on my designs and ideas. I’ve since made some amazing friends there, and it’s become my favorite part of my college experience. 

There’s so much more I’d like to write about and so many experiences that have made this semester one of the most amazing times in my life, but for now, I’ll end with this: we all feel lost sometimes. Most of my life, I’ve had no clue where I’m going or what to do next. In these situations, it’s easy to feel like the lack of a clear destination means doom, but that’s simply not the case. What matters isn’t having a foolproof plan or a certain fate, but a path forward — somewhere to plant the next footstep. You won’t find your friends or your success instantly, but you can always find a place to go that will help you achieve your goals if you look for it. So, my advice to anyone who feels lost like I did (and often still do): find your place.