Why Does Everyone Pretend They’re Fine in College?

I’m a junior in Chicago and I swear everyone around me acts “busy but thriving.” Meanwhile I’m barely holding it together. Classes, internships, rent, pressure from family. Even professors quote stats about rising anxiety since 2020, but nobody actually talks about it. Are we all just performing success for each other? Or am I the only one who feels this off balance?

I graduated from a state school in Pennsylvania a few years ago, and I’ve watched this evolve. Back then, if someone mentioned using an essay help writer, it was said in private. Now I hear students openly compare platforms, debate which site feels safer, whether Assignment Pay responds faster, or if typing “Write My Paper” at 3 a.m. is basically a coping mechanism. I won’t pretend I never felt tempted. During my senior thesis, working nights and barely sleeping, I hovered over one of those pages. What stopped me wasn’t fear of punishment. It was the realization that I was about to outsource the very struggle that was supposed to shape me. The system is brutal, yes. But if we normalize buying our way through it, we’re not fixing the pressure. We’re just proving how broken it already is.