This is my personal experience dealing with common illnesses as a college student and how I have personally coped with both the illnesses and the adjustment to being a college student. This is not meant to serve as medical advice.
When you were younger and got sick, your mom may have called the school and told them you were staying home for the day. Laying in bed, watching TV, just trying to get better. You were not worrying about what school work you had missed or if there was a paper due that week. Your mom brought you soup and you just relaxed in bed without worry.
Now that you’re in college, your mom isn’t there to make the phone call to the school and excuse your absence. Now you have two options: stay home and take the day off or get out of bed and go to class feeling like you have been hit by a truck.
It’s my first year at college, before going everyone warned me “oh there’s the freshmen sickness” that freshmen can’t seem to avoid. No one really knows what causes it and of course no one goes to see a doctor to get it checked out. So, by the sixth week of the semester, the sickness had hit me. I was coughing, felt tired, and basically didn’t want to do anything that whole day.
Now, I have gotten sick before, but I was home and when that happened I would not go into school and sit in my bed and watch TV. I couldn’t do that this time. It was a Monday morning, I had an online class and school work that I didn’t want to do. However, I had to and it sucked. Afterwards, I laid in bed and soon enough it was dinner time. When you’re sick you don’t want to leave your room. I needed food and what I felt like was a good soup, which I ended up being heated in the microwave. It wasn’t the same thing as when it comes off a stove.
Being sick in college is an experience that no one prepares you for because you’re on your own and you’re the only one who can take care of yourself. It’s a humbling experience, but having a medic bag can make it somewhat tolerable. I have one and I use it more than I thought I would. It has Ban-Aids, tide pens, Advil, cough drops, NyQuil and DayQuil. You can swap some things in and out based on what you need. That is what’s in mine and what I have found works the best.
The second thing I would recommend doing is do an assignment if the due date is close no matter how sick you feel. Even though you may feel bad, it will help you in the long run with playing catch up.
Being sick at any age is going to suck, but it tends to happen. Try to avoid it if you can and if you can’t maybe this will make you feel like you’re not the only one getting sick.