Beating Freshman Year FOMO

The best things about college are the freedom and seemingly endless options that come with living and studying on a campus built to cater to students’ whims. Inevitably, with that wonderful freedom comes some uncomfortable feelings: doubt, anxiety, and yes, fear of missing out (FOMO).

Here are two common scenarios—both of which came up in my college experience—and how to put those fears to rest early so you can enjoy your time rather than stressing about it.

Am I the only one studying?

One of my first memories in college, amidst getting swamped with 300+ pages of reading per class, was a creeping, indelible sense that everyone had hours upon hours to relax and hang out with friends. Much more than I did, certainly.

How in the world does everyone have this kind of time, I wondered? It seems obvious looking back, but if I’d looked more carefully, I would have noticed that people were rotating in and out. While it was true that there were always familiar faces hanging out, a quarter to half of my classmates or floormates wouldn’t be there at any given time, replaced by the cohort that wasn’t there the day before.

If you feel like everyone has endless amounts of time for fun, make a conscious effort to notice who is hanging out when. And if you do see the same faces again and again, be careful to not assume that their grades aren’t suffering as a result. 

Anthropology majors get to do WHAT in the summer?

I remember finding out after an anthropology seminar—which was, naturally, filled with anthropology majors—that one of them was going to spend their summer in Africa studying zebra migration patterns for her senior thesis. I, a newly (and irreversibly) declared philosophy major, am glad I was not eating at the time because I would have choked. For me, studying zebras sounded like the adventure of a lifetime.

I felt that I was missing out on something—and worse, I hadn’t known it existed until that door had closed.

This is a roundabout way of saying that you should explore every single option you have available to you: ask your advisers, ask your RA, ask people in your seminars, ask people at your campus job. Ask anyone who will answer about their experience in a department, club, or class.

The best way to prevent FOMO is to know your options, observe your surroundings, and then make decisions based on the best information possible.

Real and imagined missing out is inevitable. No one can do all the things: I’ll never spend time in the Serengeti on the university’s dime. But that doesn’t mean one day I can’t book a safari, and more importantly, I had chosen philosophy for a reason. I firmly believe, then and now, that exploring centuries’ worth of the best minds, all grappling with life’s most complex problems and mysteries, is invaluable. In the end, despite my fears, I really didn’t miss out at all.

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