“You are not sick, Emily!”

My therapist, Sherrie, stared at me wide-eyed from behind her trendy glasses, looking as wise as an owl. It had been a long slog with bipolar disorder, and quite frankly, I didn’t believe her. And, I felt that I had evidence: I had been shuttled back and forth to the psychiatric hospital on Busch Campus at Rutgers University at least ten times, many right during my college semesters. I rode a bus to intensive outpatient treatment (IOP) from my sorority house at least a dozen times, while I tried to maintain some semblance of “normalcy” during an otherwise tumultuous existence. I hated my life, and I certainly felt like I was sick.

But, Sherrie and I had one goal together—to get me through college, despite the disruption and the constant withdrawals from classes due to bipolar symptoms such as psychosis, mania, deep depression, suicidal thoughts, and panic attacks. And to get me towards this goal, Sherrie was attempting to get me to understand that bipolar disorder was one part of me, but that there was a healthy part of me, as well.

Mental health conditions affect college students at alarming rates. Like me, many of them are attempting to graduate against incredible odds. Also like me, they are sitting up nightly trying to write papers, despite seeing and hearing things that aren’t there; despite falling into depressions so deep that they don’t want to get out of bed. They........

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