Struggles With Mental Illness In College

By Zach Foster

            I wasn’t officially diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia until I was twenty years old.  Yet I started to notice problems when I was seventeen years old.  I was gradually seeing changes in my personality as well as losing interest in my activities and hobbies.  None of this made any sense to me when I was going through it and was quite scary.

            Until I began having problems I was involved in many of the activities my small town high school had to offer.  I was also one the best and smartest students in my class.  I even had an active social life outside of my school activities.  In short, I was a typical teenage male.

            Shortly after I turned seventeen, I began to notice some changes in myself during the fall of my junior year.  I started to…