Taking care of your mental health and well being is a daunting task for anyone, but the challenge is more intense for students. Between keeping your grades up, working to keep yourself afloat financially, and trying to maintain a social life, which is crucial for wellbeing in it’s own right, it’s easy to let self care slip through the cracks. I’ve felt that happening to me many times as a student, and it affects every aspect of your life. Those grades you worked so hard on start to fall. Your work suffers. You start to get distant from your friends and loved ones as burn out sets in. Everyone knows a few classmates that hit a wall and had to put school on the back burner. I’m sure many of us were nearly that person ourselves. For me, the key to keeping it together was an exercise routine. It’s not an intense routine. I’m not an athlete, and I’m not trying to compete in a powerlifting meet. But the routine itself keeps me grounded. I know that three days a week after work and classes, I’m going to be in the gym. When life gets hectic, that consistency and predictability goes a long way. It’s important for me to remember, however, that it doesn’t have to be the gym. My place of comfort can be just about anywhere. If one day the gym no longer brings me that joy and peace of mind, it can make a yoga studio my happy place. It could be a quiet back road on my bike. It could be a hiking trail. While it doesn’t have to be exercise, I personally find that balancing out academic overload with something physical is how I keep my mental health on track. This balance is important to me as a student as well. It’s easy to bury your nose in your studies and spend all day in the library. That may work for some, but “All Work and No Play makes [most humans] a Dull Boy.” Mental fatigue will start to set in, and mental fatigue leads to physical fatigue. Soon those long nights cramming for an exam will eat away at you. We’re not meant to spend all day on academic labor. We’re meant to run. We’re meant to jump. We’re meant to play. My advice to anyone struggling with their personal wellness is to find their play. Find an activity that gives you joy and pulls you out of your books.

It should be no surprise to anyone that with very few exceptions, writing does not really pay the bills. Degrees in the humanities are not incredibly lucrative, and despite the importance of writing, critical thinking, and a thirst for knowledge, the fields that promote this have not kept up with the cost of living. I was one of the many people from my generation who was told, “just go to college. Get a degree. Everything will be fine.” Unfortunately, I believed it. I earned an English degree, and since I was not set on a life in academia, I settled into a career as a copywriter. I spent years working freelance for digital marketing consultants, often averaging under minimum wage to create the content for the websites for which they charged a small fortune. This is what helped me realize I could do so much more with my writing. I could become the web developer who didn’t need to underpay a recent college graduate to craft web copy. I could cut out the middleman, become my own boss, and actually make a livable wage that could pay the rent. However, as many career switchers will tell you, changing from the humanities to STEM is a culture shock. That programming language you need to learn may as well be written in ancient Aramaic, and communication styles between tech and non-tech colleagues can cause tension. That’s why I am going back to school to earn a computer science degree—not just to learn technical skills but to learn the language. With the rest of this essay in mind, one might jump to the conclusion that this new career will only grant me fulfillment in a monetary sense, but that could not be farther from the truth. This new career will grant me freedom. Freedom from economic stress, yes, but also freedom to learn, grow, and cultivate new passions. When your life is dedicated to scraping out a living by writing unimaginative marketing copy, the last thing you want to do after work is pick up a book on philosophy or sit down and write the novel you’ve been outlining in your head as you fall asleep. We would all like to have a patron who funds us as we write the next great American novel, but that’s not the reality for most. The artists, writers, and thinkers of this generation have to earn a living, and I believe a career in software and web development will give me that and so much more. It would be easy for me to wax poetic about my love for technology and web development, but I would much rather wax poetic about waxing poetic. I could choose a career path that consumes my life and drains my creative energy, or I could choose a career path that lets me enjoy my work and lets me enjoy a life full of art. I will always choose the latter, and I hope you will help me do so through this scholarship.