It's only been 2 days

It's only been 2 days since college started and so far I've sent out a flurry of emails to a variety of Professors. Switched out of two classes and had 3 Office Hours. I've also had to figure out a roadmap on how I'll be applying to scholarships and fellowships in the fall. This is stressful, even with all of the self-improvement of the summer, it's still stressful. It's weird because even though the stress hasn't gone away, I now have an infinitely better way to deal with it. I just take a deep breath and start. The difficulties of college haven't changed at all but my coping mechanisms have. It's like all the techniques which I learned over the course of the summer are the backup team to my mental health. The million early assignments which used to drive me crazy are now easily dealt with by journaling and getting them all on paper in order to have a clearer headspace. A new habit I also picked up was that every night I made a list of my priorities for the next day. Usually, it's only 3-5 things because too many and I tend to not do them whilst with only 3 things to do in 24 hours it is much easier to do and much harder to justify to myself. Meditation in the morning also helps to rein in the runaway panic and stress which happens when one feels overwhelmed. The gym which I started in June is now my happy place where the anxiety of academics can disappear for one hour. Even this website acts like a weekly writing practice where I am able to have a creative outlet daily ( hopefully daily ) and a place where to practice my writing. Building good habits was a process which at times I questioned the usefulness of, not knowing whether all this time and effort was worth it or not. I can honestly now say that it was 1000% worth it and now that I am returning to the normal life they have been coming to benefit me greatly.   While this semester is starting I really recommend at least one reoccurring problem you deal with, finding a possible solution, and working on a habit to deal with it.  We can't remove the bad parts of life but we can learn how to better deal with them!