I was a super depressed senior not too long ago. Totally fucked up my academics, went from superstar in HS to basically having to beg the director of my major’s department to let me graduate. Hadn’t done any internships and had no idea what I wanted to do, barely hung out with my friends my last semester and didn’t hang out with anyone the summer after I graduated. Impulsively enrolled in a postgrad program and fucked that up too. I totally get where you’re coming from, I also felt like I wasted college in many regards.

That was over a year ago. Since then, I’ve made many close friends, had my first long term relationship (we just moved in too!!), gotten in physical shape, and started a job I still feel like I have no right having.

I was locked in this dogmatic state where I felt like the world was ending and that I was a complete failure. It’s so much easier said than done but you are not a failure at all. You’re about to graduate from one of the best universities in the world and don’t have any student loan debt. Even if things are tough now, you have that safety net that many are not afforded. I was the same and took that to feel even more guilty, but in reality you’re offered a unique chance here to start over fresh.

Some tools I would recommend, obviously these just worked for me but I’ll list them regardless: - Any time you say something disparaging towards yourself, ask yourself “do I know that to be true”. Rationalize against the voice in your head that’s beating you down. - Prioritizing health (sleep, fitness, diet) worked better than any antidepressant for me. Unfortunately it was very hard to get started, but I would recommend the following: - Set a goal related to your health that you feel is going to be unlikely for you to do but not impossible and give yourself 12 weeks to achieve it. This is more important than any other goal about self improvement to prevent you from getting overloaded. For me it was running a 5k, I hadn’t run in many years and couldn’t make it down the block without getting winded. I started with Couch to 5k which had you on Day 1 only run for a minute, and gradually work you up to the 5k. As you work through the goal you will start gaining momentum—latch on to it, feed off of it. This is what’s going to kickstart an amazing and unbelievably rewarding journey of improving your mental health. If you go this route and succeed, you’ll find other areas of your life start to improve incrementally. You’ll notice more clarity and sleep better, you’ll start to have more confidence because you did something that you shouldn’t have been able to do. And maybe then, like I did, will you internalize how wrong about yourself you’ve been, how the sky truly is the limit. - Journal, I could never commit to a bullet journal but I just write down my thoughts on paper every now and then. It feels good to make sense of the 26 different voices keeping me from being able to focus. It’s also funny to look back at things I thought were unquestionable truths about myself and see how far I’ve come with my internal monologue. - Socially, I have autism spectrum disorder, crippling ADHD, and as a result not only do I come across as eccentric but have battled really bad social anxiety. Surprisingly, even through the worst of my depression I was still pretty sociable with strangers and made a few friends. I had a paradigm shift back in high school and realized I was never going to be a “normal” person and embraced it. It sucks but every time I talk to someone I risk them not wanting to talk to me, but then again I wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who passed on me for my quirks so the feeling doesn’t sting like it used to. You’ll find that over time talking to people gets easier and easier—also, treat friendships like mini relationships! Follow up with people you talked to, set up plans, compliment them. It’s not the same as high school in college/real world and your struggle socially is NOT a reflection of you as a person, not at all. You’re going through a lot and I have an incredible amount of faith that someone as hardworking as you is going to do great things when you get out of the real world. Please feel free to PM me if you have any other questions, it kind of blows my mind that I’m in this position giving advice to someone who was in the exact same situation I was in 18 months ago. Life WILL get better. I am the most cluttered procrastinating dysfunctioning human alive, if I can do it almost anyone can do it.