I was finding myself waking up before my alarm clock every day, feeling sharp pains in my chest, experiencing tunnel vision and muscle weakness, etc. At one point my chest pain was so intense that my supervisor actually drove me to the hospital. I had experienced my first panic attack.

I was grateful to have a job. Unfortunately, I immediately knew that I didn’t want to work there long-term and actually started applying to other jobs the second week I was there.

I had started encountering a troubling reality that I was going to continue experiencing for the rest of my undergraduate degree. Math classes were a struggle – I got a C in calculus III. Too many B’s and C’s in math courses were going to make my grades suffer.