Editor’s Epilogue: Overprocessing my human brain

If anyone ever asked me to write down what I was thinking at any given moment, I’d be able to write a whole novel.

While that may seem like a blessing on the surface as a journalist, it always felt more like a wretched curse. Whether it is worrying, daydreaming or overthinking, the human processor that is my brain is constantly overworked with emotions with far too many tabs open.

In one way, this constant state of overloading has allowed me to master the art of multitasking —  getting work done with ease by switching back and forth between the plethora of mental tabs. There is a fine line there, though — one too many tabs open for too long and I divert from efficiency to chaos. Those thoughts then amplify into a mess of overthinking that causes my brain to overheat and slowly shut down.

I could be writing an essay for class and remember I need to respond to an email so I go to draft the message and as I am typing I realize I also forgot to respond to a friend so I go to text her but then I see an older chat I sent and start thinking about that and then I start wondering if I’m too friendly or not friendly enough which makes me think if my friends even think I’m a good person and that goes into me thinking about older interactions with strangers and so on and so forth my mind continues to ramble … kind of the way I am right now.

To be frank, my brain didn’t always function this way. While having anxious emotions is completely normal, up until college, I was the one of the most confident people I knew. I never used to fixate on stressful moments or even try to decode how others felt about me, because I felt some level of control in my life, but then I had my freshman year of college online due to the pandemic.

These bad habits donned on me during that first year and now overthinking is second nature; the concoction of meeting so many people at once and trying to make friends online proved to be a huge hurdle. 

I think it is acceptable to say the life of an average college student is far from average. Everything from living with your best friends to waking up early for class after a night of late fun is so far removed from every other stage of normal life. While I will say I have undoubtedly loved my time at USC so far, I’d be lying to you if I said it was easy and I am sure some of my peers would say the same. The learning curve is steep and it’s one I’m still on. 

As an inherently emotional individual, college has presented me with its fair share of difficulties. Amid all the craziness, it has been so easy to get caught up in stressing over classes, worrying about what others think of me or if I am doing enough.

Once I lay my head on the pillow at the end of the day, rather than counting sheep, I recount all the thoughts that constantly occupy my headspace — my family, my friends, my classes, my future career, my love life, my health and everything else that encompasses my existence on this planet. 

Part of it is probably just because I get anxious more easily now. Starting college during such unprecedented times made me lose that sense of control I once felt. Another part of it could be because I tend to put how others feel and what others think first, in whatever form possible. While putting others’ feelings first simply meant caring deeply about my friends in high school, in college it morphed into stressing over how others felt. At some point, meeting new people in college used to be accompanied by the pressure of wondering if they liked me or not. 

This semester I have been actively working on it and try to stop the cycle of overthinking. After all, there are only so many times you can reboot your laptop when it crashes because you were overworking it; the same goes for the human brain.

Whether I go for a walk with my roommate, listen to my hip-hop playlist or write my thoughts out, I make the effort to alleviate the overthinking and stress I unnecessarily have burdened myself with. While these feelings still come and go, my mind already feels much freer than it did a year or two ago.

So in short, it is a lot. But I am ultimately trying to focus on writing one word at a time instead of the whole novel.

“Editors’ Epilogue” is a rotating column featuring a new Daily Trojan editor in each installment and their personal experiences of living in what seems to be an irrepressible dumpster fire of a world. Anjali Patel is a news editor at the Daily Trojan.