It is 6 a.m. and my roommates and I have had a total of eight alarms go off from 6:00 to 6:40 a.m. for the Freshman Cohort’s Spring Semester Registration. (Can be read as: none of the alarms actually got anyone out of bed, but all of them successfully jump-started the kind of frenzy that feels like work even though it accomplishes absolutely nothing).
Fast forward to an hour later: it's 7:30 a.m. and the adrenaline of freshman registration has me wide awake in the most unproductive way possible. Everything is done: our next semester’s classes have been finalized, calls have been made to anxious parents across time zones and laptops have been shut in finality, but there’s a very specific kind of collective exhaustion that doesn’t come from doing too much, but from thinking too much despite not having worked at all.
Not energized, not focused, just overworked in that strange, brain-buzzing state where you’re technically awake but emotionally unprepared for the rollercoaster that is your freshman year. And it’s not the useful kind of thinking that leads to decisions or clarity — it’s that loop of re-decided decisions, backups for backup classes added to an overloaded SIS cart and unnamed feelings that somehow keep expanding into full-blown spirals.
Over this past semester, I’ve learned that overthinking is clever like that. It makes you feel like you’re moving toward an answer when really, all you’re doing is pacing in circles inside your head. You call it “processing,” but it's more like a brooding cloud of anxiety that makes you feel like your achievements mean nothing and your time spent doing nothing but worry is an achievement. Because it means you care, right?
Somewhere, as I stare up at my ceiling riding the wave of post–SIS registration adrenaline, I come to realise that freshman year makes overthinking a hundred times worse. Academic burnout doesn’t always look like dramatic breakdowns or nights spent crying over your laptop. Sometimes it looks like waking up tired even after sleeping. Sometimes it looks like avoiding assignments, not because they’re hard, but because your brain has already exhausted itself rehearsing how they might go wrong.
In an academically rigorous environment like Hopkins, what makes it worse is that overthinking is often culturally rewarded. We live in a bubble where analysis is linked irrevocably to emotional depth, and where second-guessing is worshipped as intellectual responsibility. We romanticize burnout as if it’s proof of ambition. Why do we look up in awe when someone tells us they’re on their seventh coffee of the day, as though caffeine-induced panic is the new GPA booster? Somehow, spiraling has become a personality trait. Being overwhelmed is “relatable.”
Stress is an aesthetic of its own.
But here’s the thing: this inherent instinct to think a thousand things at once and make mental checklists for what is to come instead of working in the present comes from wanting to do things right. To show up. To matter. To make sure you don’t disappoint anyone, most of all, yourself. In a world where constantly analyzing your emotions is praised as maturity, it’s easy to forget that real maturity also includes letting yourself actually rest. Rest could mean letting a moment pass without dissecting it. Grabbing a coffee with friends and calling it a catch-up instead of a study-break. Letting yourself laugh without wondering which assignment you should be working on. Letting yourself be human without running diagnostics. The truth is, caring deeply isn’t the problem. It’s carrying everything all at once that is.
Emotional First Aid for overthinkers begins by practicing to see overthinking not as a flaw, but as a web browser overloaded with too many tabs that need shutting. One must regularly clear the cache. You have to face the noise before you can create space between the thought and the story. And if you forget to clear the cache or take that brain break (because it is only human to forget and err), you begin again. This time, with no self-lecturing, no mental scoldings, no elongated beratings over time lost that could be used on studying. Just a quiet: “That’s enough for today.”
And so here I am, writing this article while sitting on the Gilman couches, ten minutes past its deadline. Was I totally productive post-registration? No. Did I finish everything on my to-do list? Also no. But did I have fun writing this article and ultimately produce something I am proud of? Yes. And sometimes, that’s enough.
Samika Jain is a freshman from Mumbai, India, majoring in Molecular and Cellular Biology. Her column holds onto things she probably should’ve forgotten by now, but she writes them down anyway.
