having trouble pretending to be happy

I’ve been feeling really down lately and everyday I just want to go home for the summer already but I have almost a month left. I started seeing my therapist twice a week (instead of once) but people ask me if I’m ok a lot so I know I’m bad at acting happy in public when I’m not. I usually do ok with it when I’m working with preschoolers but that’s only a few hours a week and takes all my energy. When I’m with other people, even coworkers and professors, I’m having a hard time not acting depressed, and I just cancelled a meeting last minute with my independent study professor just cuz I don’t want to have an hour long conversation with anyone, and I feel really bad cuz it’s the first time I ever did that (even though he has cancelled our meetings last minute before).

I have a 30 minute meeting with a different professor in a half hour to talk about revising a paper (we all had to meet with him), and I just know he’s gonna be asking me if I’m ok or something.

Yesterday, in a different class, I put my head down during a 2 minute partner activity where we had to pretend to be therapist/patient, and my professor noticed cuz she was sitting near me (it was a guest lecturer) and now she’s been emailing me cuz she’s worried, and she must have gone out of her way to get my name cuz I’ve never talked to her in person and nobody takes attendance or anything.

I feel like a failure cuz now I’m cancelling things and I can’t just talk to people and act happy all the time like everyone else does, and now I can’t even be professional with professors. I just want to go home and take a long nap.

I’m sorry you’re unhappy. Is there a counselor at your school you can go see? Can you speak to your therapist or your parents? Please reach out to someone this afternoon and let them help you.

I agree with @austinmshauri that you should seek help from the school counselors and your own therapists.

I’m wondering also if you may need to take a break from school? A leave of absences? You might want to try to do something else besides school for awhile and then come back to it. It can be refreshing.

Here are some things that you could try –

Student Conservation Association – many internships of different lengths of time. Many include housing – https://www.thesca.org/serve

Volunteer.gov – some positions include housing

workaway.info – positions that include place to live and some tasks about 4-5 horus a day. Sometimes a meal. Locations all over the world

Coolworks – jobs that pay and some of them also provide housing and room and board.

I’ve known students who have taken time and with a partner have hiked the Appalachian trail or the Pacific trail.
https://thetrek.co/

I feel you. I don’t have a ton of advice for how to deal with this but I just wanted to say that I know it sucks. I literally struggle to find the will to live on some days. Hang in there! It’s not for forever. Look forward to summer if you can.

Thanks for all the responses.

@austinmshauri I speak with my therapist regularly but there’s just no quick fix

@Dustyfeathers Thank you for the information. I really want to get out of college ASAP, so the idea of prolonging it makes me cringe a bit, but my college advisor suggested that I think about taking a quarter off for an internship or something next year, when I told him how I’ve been feeling about school, so I’ll give it some thought.

@oprah2020 Thanks. I am looking forward to the summer, but it feels really far off. I just get so sad every time I wake up on a weekday morning and realize I have to do more college and interact with people.

Thanks for all the responses.

@austinmshauri I speak with my therapist regularly but there’s just no quick fix

@Dustyfeathers Thank you for the information. I really want to get out of college ASAP, so the idea of prolonging it makes me cringe a bit, but my college advisor suggested that I think about taking a quarter off for an internship or something next year, when I told him how I’ve been feeling about school, so I’ll give it some thought.

@oprah2020 Thanks. I am looking forward to the summer, but it feels really far off. I just get so sad every time I wake up on a weekday morning and realize I have to do more college and interact with people.