How I Learned to Love Myself and USC After a Rough First Semester

By: Antonia Le ‘22

Trigger warnings for mentions of anxiety, depression, and suicide.

I’m still trying to process the fact that my freshman year at USC is almost over. I’m heading into my second round of finals, and the first final I have coming up is for my 400-level math class. Right now, I’m really hoping that this past year has been a dream, and tomorrow I’ll wake up as a high school senior who doesn’t have to take a Theory of Numbers final.

I would be lying if I said that I didn’t want to wake up as a high school senior again for another reason. I think I would like to go back and re-do my freshman year. I’ve made a lot of mistakes these past few months. First off, I’d like to take a different Linear Algebra class because even a whole semester later, my old Linear Algebra professor filled me with rage. I would also have taken the opportunity to dye my hair some crazy color because I’m at college now and my mom isn’t here to yell at me. I would also throw away my old backpack before the strap was halfway to death. Mostly, though, I would just try to be happier. After all, one of the reasons I went to USC in the first place was because I wanted to be happy.

When deciding where to go to college, I was faced with deciding between four schools: UCSD and SDSU in my hometown of San Diego, and UCLA and USC. USC was the most expensive of them (even with my merit scholarship), but it was always my dream school. I loved the idea of living in Los Angeles and finding myself in the city of angels, and my heart leaned toward USC even when my brain said to go somewhere cheaper.

Ultimately, I went to USC because I had no baggage here. So many people from my high school were going to UCSD, SDSU, and UCLA, and I was convinced that in order to be a different person, I had to be surrounded by completely different people.

The truth is that I’ve never felt completely comfortable in my own skin. I was never good at making friends, and I spent most of high school perpetually afraid that everyone I thought I was friends with secretly hated me. I never got asked out, and I got rejected each time I tried to confess my feelings for a crush. I was imprisoned by my fear of other people, and no matter how many times I tried to logic myself out of the fear, it didn’t work. Somehow, I had created a jail cell for myself, and I’d forgotten to make a key.

I once learned that human brains like patterns and repetition, no matter how much what you’re repeating hurts you. So every time I thought to myself, “God, I hate myself and everybody hates me”, my brain saw that it was a thought that I’d had before and was like, “yeah, I like this. I want more of this.”

I thought going to USC and breaking the patterns that so many people from my high school followed would save me. Maybe once I was out of the city that I saw every day for eighteen years, my brain would reset and I’d be happy.

For a while, I was. For a while, going to USC was really good for me. I really lucked out with the suitemates that I got assigned to randomly. Even now, after we’ve all seen the worst of each other, we’re still each others’ hypewomen.

And then, my brain was like, “Screw you, I miss it when you were unhappy and hated being alive”. The fear that everyone hated me started to come back. I overanalyzed every canceled plan, every little microexpression.

My first semester was rough, and the beginning of my second semester was even rougher. I didn’t want to talk to anyone because I didn’t know what to say, and I was afraid that if I said something wrong, then I would look like a total lunatic. I was sad all the time, and I didn’t know how not to be sad other than to watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine (and it’s not advisable to watch an entire season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine every time you’re sad when you’re sad a lot). I thought that going to USC was going to save me, but my brain was still slowly trying to kill me.

I don’t want to call it depression or anxiety, because I have never gotten a professional diagnosis. I also don’t want to call what I had suicidal thoughts, because I know it would really inconvenience my roommate if I happened to die, and I’d rather be inconvenient alive than dead (That was half a joke. Every time you laugh at one of my jokes, a cute puppy is born). 

And then, a few weeks into the second semester, something changed. My imposter syndrome was at an all-time high, and seeing all of my friends get into clubs and do great things with their lives made me want to get more involved. I eventually joined Asian Pacific Cinema Association (APCA), Student Coalition for Asian Pacific Empowerment (SCAPE), and Trojans360.

In second semester, I was more stressed than I’d ever been in my entire life. I had some sort of responsibility for each of my clubs, and on top of that, I was taking eighteen units. Those eighteen units included WRIT 150, Calculus III, a 400-level Math Class, and a C++ class. I had signed myself up for a spring semester ten times harder than my fall semester (because scheduling and registration suck sometimes).

And somehow, I’m alive. Even more surprising, I’m happy to be alive.

Having so many commitments and so many things to do gave my brain a distraction from the elaborate prison it was trying to build me. I had so much to do that I didn’t have time to think about being sad. Moreover, being more involved gave me the opportunity to interact with more people. Knowing more people means that there’s a higher chance that there must be someone out there who doesn’t hate me, so I started reminding myself that every time I got lost in my own headspace again.

I also started exercising regularly. Strangely, the less time I had to do things, the more times I spent in the gym. Because my schedule was so packed, I had to plan gym days instead of simply saying, “yeah, I’ll do that tomorrow” and then never actually getting around to it. I started feeling physically healthier, and it was only natural that improvements in my mental health followed.

I began seeking out beauty instead of running away from it. I studied in Doheny or VKC Library or Annenberg instead of Leavey now, because Leavey just makes me sad. I started putting more effort into my appearance because I reckoned that even though I felt pretty bad inside, I could at least look cute outside. Whenever I looked cute, I felt a little better about myself.

I realized that one of the biggest reasons that I was so unhappy was that I didn’t know who I was, and I kept measuring myself against other people in order to figure out my own identity. Everyone around me seemed to have everything figured out, and that just made me feel bad.

Getting more involved and spending more time trying to love myself helped me figure out who I was. I joined three organizations and loved all of them. I also realized that I really like handling social media communications and marketing–in fact, next year, I’ll be SCAPE’s Marketing Coordinator.

I’ll admit, there are still days where I can barely get out of bed, when I start randomly crying because I know that I’m supposed to be happy but can’t figure out why I’m not happy. I still second-guess every interaction I have with others and worry that everyone is secretly hanging out without me. I’m still trying to figure out who I am. I haven’t sought professional help because I can’t fit it in my schedule. I know that to make meaningful progress, I would need to do so.

It’s going to be a long road to true happiness, but I’m ready for the journey. Maybe for the first time, I’m not asking for happiness from my friends or my school or my city. I’m asking for happiness from me, and somehow, that’s made me love USC more than anything.

Sure, looking back, I shouldn’t have pinned all of my hopes and aspirations on USC. I shouldn’t have thought that USC was going to save me from myself. Maybe I shouldn’t have discounted all those other schools because I had too much baggage associated with them. Hell, maybe one of those schools would have been technically a better “fit” for me than USC.

But right now, I don’t care. If I didn’t go to USC, I’d always be stuck wondering “what if I did go to USC?”. If I didn’t go to USC, I would have never learned that I didn’t need to rely on a school for my own happiness.

For a while, I resented USC because I was so unhappy. Right now, though, I’m grateful. I’m grateful for McCarthy Honors College, which is honestly like living in a hotel, and I would have never gotten that experience anywhere else. I’m grateful for the fact that I’m living right next to a Trader Joe’s for the first time in my life. I’m grateful for the ladies at LiteraTea who don’t judge me for my basic orders. I’m grateful for my GESM professor, who introduced me to my current favorite book. I’m grateful for my WRIT150 professor who always gives me good feedback and who doesn’t hold the fact that I’m always half-asleep in my class against me. I’m grateful for every friend I’ve made here, whether they secretly hate me or not.

I’m grateful for USC. Yeah, this school didn’t save me, but it forced me to realize that I’m capable of saving myself.

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