Editor’s Note: The monthly “Elevate Well-Being” blog series shares thoughts and reflections of Clemson Well-Being Council members and University faculty, staff and students. Our latest blog is courtesy Leah Rochford, a senior marketing major at Clemson.
Growing up, I always had my life together. I had my daily schedule ingrained in my brain of where I needed to be at every minute of the day. Every second was filled with an activity … academics, my high school sport, my job, or social time with friends. I knew exactly what I was going to study in college and any time anyone asked me where I wanted to attend school, I would say the South. I had married parents and a wonderful little brother, all of whom are my entire life and I love so deeply. When senior year of high school came around, I was accepted into Clemson’s business program and Honors College. My plan was aligning perfectly with the vision I had for my future.
College slapped me directly in the face.
Specifically, the spring semester of my junior year at Clemson flipped my life upside down. This is the semester so many people place so much emphasis on, which can create a feeling of overwhelming pressure. Many of my conversations that semester went as follows: “You have to find an excellent internship for the summer so that you can get a job out of college”, “This is the most important semester of your life”, and “You’re just not trying hard enough if you can’t secure an internship.”
I was bending over backwards to try to secure something for the summer, as well as keep up with my grades, my current internship, my chair position within my sorority and several other leadership involvements within my degree program. I had filled out more than 100 summer internship applications and only made it to the interview stage for a handful. I was absolutely shattered to my core. I was following all the steps and was supposed to have my life together and figured it out by now. I had a stellar résumé; I had a 4.0 GPA, but still doors kept closing. I felt like a fraud during my Spring 2025 internship because I was promoting well-being while secretly stressing every day about how I’d find a job without that crucial summer internship. Why was this happening to me?
What I failed to realize was that this was happening FOR me.
At the very end of April, I accepted defeat and packed my car up to return to Indiana to work at my summer job from previous years. The moment was so vivid, I was preparing to drive home at 5 a.m. on Thursday, May 5. But on the night of May 4, I received a message from one of my previous mentors. She was inquiring about me filling a marketing internship role in Clemson for the summer. While I probably would have been open to any opportunity in my field at that point, this position was in an area that piqued my interest — marketing research. So of course, I jumped in and said, yes! Within 24 hours of receiving that message, I was unpacking my car and planning on making my return to Clemson at the beginning of June.
The internship itself put me significantly out of my comfort zone, as I was conducting research on engineering opportunities for Clemson. However, it was a great learning experience for me, and I truly gained so much knowledge from the role. I also was able to experience Clemson in the summer and build some friendships that will last a lifetime. Looking back, I think about how much time I spent stressing about something that wasn’t ever really in my control.
While it may have been down to the wire and way too last minute for my liking, it truly did all work out. I was exactly where I was meant to be at that moment. College students often feel a push to only focus on the future and what their life will look like outside of the classroom, but forget to soak up the excitement and joy of the here and now.
If we don’t slow down and enjoy the journey of college, it’s easy to slip into the comparison game — being happy for our friends’ achievements while also feeling guilty or disappointed our own path doesn’t look the way we thought it would. Comparison truly is the thief of joy and it’s not fair to us to be upset about a path we weren’t intended to be on. I am not suggesting giving up and not putting in any effort. We are still in the driver’s seat of our own lives, but we also need to trust our all is more than enough to lead us on the road we are meant to be on. We need to give ourselves more grace to not be so hard on ourselves when we don’t have it all figured out. There’s not one person on this planet whose life couldn’t be changed by a single phone call. No one has it all together and it’s time we stop pretending we do.
When my amazing mentor, Anna Courie, asked me at the end of last semester to write a blog post for Your Clemson, I initially planned to write about the transition from being home for the summer to returning as a full-time student. It’s crazy to me how drastically that prompt changed, but it just goes to show our lives change all the time. There are so many opportunities out there we don’t even know exist yet. You are never alone in feeling uncertain about what the future will hold, but we can reframe this in our minds. How exciting that there are so many different paths we could take and places we end up! Enjoy every second and trust that you don’t need to have everything figured out all the time.
