I’ve gotten so used to having minimal (to none) social life during my time at community college that I’m having difficulty adapting to my new college life where I actually have a social life to maintain. When I was at Grossmont, I spent a huge majority of my time dedicating to school work and my part-time job because I simply had nothing else to do. I think another reason why I’m having a hard time maintaining and/or improving my social life at UCSD is because I am constantly trying to catch up with all the school work and study. It has gotten to the point where I would feel guilty doing anything else that’s not school/career related. I think there are multiple reasons for this, though. For one, it’s certainly that impostor syndrome - I feel inadequate compared to the average student here. I know that I’m wrong though, because I did get accepted here so technically, I’m still just as qualified as anybody else. But even if I know that, I still feel inadequate deep within my soul and so I bust my ass just so I can at least aim to meet the academic standards and rigor here. Second, I think I’ve adapted the mentality that what I’ve done before worked (i.e. have zero social life and study 24/7 worked because it got me to where I wanted to be), and so this is a tried and tested method, I must do what I did then to yield the desired results. So now, I’m trying to do (or even improve) whatever work ethic I had in community college to get accepted to summer research programs and ultimately an MD/PhD program. However, I know that just because it worked then, doesn’t mean it would work again. I mean, most likely, it would. But I’m constantly spending time investing in my future and I’ve neglected to live in the present. Someone told me that I can’t make schooling as a “phase” that’s independent from the rest of my life and i should weave school as part of my life. And it’s true, I really can’t dedicate every second of my life for the next ten years studying (especially with the career path I’m heading towards). I’m sure there are a myriad of ways to improve my school and life balance, but I think, at this point, I’m too scared to approach any of them.