I spent a lot of my first two years of college sick. The source of my physical unraveling had little to do with the normal collegiate vices. I didn’t experience a hangover until my senior year and I was often struck by a case of temporary muteness around people of the opposite sex. I even avoided The Great Pink Eye Outbreak that ravaged our campus during my freshman year. (How bad was that outbreak? So bad that the CDC investigated it.) No, stress was the culprit. Although I was dealing with any number of stressors, the root cause of this particular reaction was schoolwork. I was, and still often am, a perfectionist. I spent most of my time during those first two years in my books. Or trying to be in my books. Or falling asleep in my books. Or, during my sophomore year, trying to sleep in the top bunk while being dreadfully afraid that I would roll out, fall on the floor, break an arm, and not be able to type that English paper or be of any use in Physics lab.
On the eve of every crunch period, I found myself fighting off a sore throat and a low fever. My body reached the height of its revolt during the winter of my sophomore year. No more were my fevers low. Instead they raged. I responded by spending even more time in the library. Whenever I was hit by a particularly unbearable wave of illness, I would take a quick nap on one of the many available sofas.
Thanks, everyone, for not stealing my laptop. I’m sorry that I repaid the favor by covering large swaths of the engineering library in my germs.
But around midterm time during sophomore spring, my body had a completely different reaction to the stress. I was late. My period had always been remarkably reliable, often to the day and sometimes to the hour. If I had been another type of girl living a different type of life, each day that passed without its arrival would have left me fighting off panic attacks. But between my inability to actually, you know, speak to boys and the falling asleep in my books, there was definitely no sex occurring. There was little of anything occurring.
It was simply the stress. It was the clusterfuck of taking Physics and Organic Chemistry at the same time. It was the approaching series finales of Dawson’s Creek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was the fact that soon my age would have a two in front of it instead of a one. Apparently the most significant skill I picked up in those first two years of college was the ability to manufacture stress out of any situation.
When the delay moved from a few days to an entire week, I told my best friend and roommate.
“What if you’re having the Black Jesus?” she asked excitedly.
“I’m pretty sure that I would not be the vessel chosen for that particular task.”
“I think you should take a pregnancy test. It’ll be funny!”
My response was a non-committal shrug. I had proven myself to be rather blasé about my health in that way that teenagers so often are. Much as my fevers had a way of eventually subsiding despite my refusal to rest, my period would eventually appear. But it didn’t. One week quickly became two weeks and no matter how smart and reasonable we generally were the idea of some sort of Immaculate Conception intrigued us.
I had a way then, as I think the overly studious often do, of falling ass backwards into youth’s milestones. So there I was with my best friend browsing for a pregnancy test when my womb was definitely empty. We pondered why you couldn’t just purchase a single one. We debated early response versus traditional. And as we had already let all logic escape us, we undertook this endeavor at the local CVS.
That year we lived directly above the bathroom, so with the test in hand I took a quick run down and an even quicker run back up. I fidgeted with abandon as the seconds passed, nervous for a result that I already knew. When time was up, I looked at the test.
“It’s negative.”
My best friend sighed. She was really hoping for the second coming.
Tags: adolescence, but seriously why do they only sell them in groups of two or more, college, pink eye, pregnancy test
I suspect that no matter who you are and what your circumstances, the ninety seconds between peeing on the stick and the stick displaying its result are excruciating.
They sell them in twos so you can keep one of them in your first aid kit for next time.
(I should probably replace mine, it’s 6 years old at this point)
That was our assumption.
And it halves the mnumber of times you have to brave actually buying the things.
When I actually was pregnant, it took like 5 tests over a week for that damn line to show up clear enough to tell, so I’m all for buying in bulk.
I think they sell them in twos because I know I’ve always looked at the negative and thought, “But what if it’s WRONG?” because boy oh boy did I not want to be pregnant, so then I use the 2nd one, too.
I’m really enjoying your posts this week, Samantha. I’d say, “very nice”, but it doesn’t really fit, it kind of makes you too tame. Still, I like it.
Same. Wonderful essays, all.
I’m reading these being like “DON’T SPEND THEM ALL IN ONE PLACE!” I mean, thank you Samantha for sharing them with us! I hope you have a million more to put out there.
I literally never had a regular period the whole time I was in college. Thanks, unreasonable workloads and irregular sleep schedules!
I also have a story of “taking a pregnancy test at university despite almost certainly not being pregnant”. *high-five* When I met my boyfriend, we were together for a few months before having sex. I decided to go on the Pill in preparation. I was told to take it on Day 1 of a period (ie, the day the bleeding starts), so waited to do so; my period didn’t come for three months. I took a pregnancy test in a fit of paranoia, but it was of course negative; in the end I just started taking the Pill on an arbitrary day. My first “period”/withdrawal bleed when on it was one of the worst and heaviest of my entire life. Bodies are shit sometimes.
I had to take a pregnancy test at university despite certainly not being pregnant because I was sick and nauseous and asked mom to take me to the doctor, and he told her “girls lie to their mothers about being virgins.” And since I was still a minor, she decided to get the test done “just to eliminate any doubts.”
I told them the only sperm I had ever had contact with was from the sea urchins in Embriology 1 lab class.
Then the test he made me take was the blood test kind that takes 24 hours to get results, and then the lab called me to go give more blood because there was a problem with my test, and mom freaked out and started an interrogation about my boyfriend.
I don’t know why I find the idea of sea urchin sperm so hilarious, but I do.
No, wait, I know. It’s b/c sea urchin flesh is the texture of sperm (or possibly overcooked tapioca mixed with snot–my memories of that sushi night are hazy), so what is the texture of sea urchin sperm? Is it…spermier? How is that possible?
The bit of the sea urchin that you eat is the roe, AFAIK – is that eggs or sperm?
This was more or less my college experience. A depressive phase is a good substitute for a slutty phase, right?
(It isn’t, not least because I now spend a lot of time being like “let’s not talk about it” when everyone else is trading wild college stories)
After I lost my job in NYC, that part came. It was like making up for lost time.
I went to the a women’s college in the south, and my sophomore year, I got Mono. I was super sick all the time. Every time I went to the health center they insisted on giving me a pregnancy test. You have a fever of 101 and a weird rash? Might be pregnant. Swollen glands and a cough? Might be pregnant. I was told on three different occasions that no methods of birth control were 100% effective, and despite my protests that my methods of A) being terrified of sex and B) having a boyfriend that lived 3,000 miles away were in fact 100% effective, I constantly had to take pregnancy tests. I ended up transferring.
Solidarity eyeroll. At my university (also in the south), every possible symptom was definitely the result of an STD, regardless of your sexual history.
I think this is every college because this definitely happened at Princeton. I have friends who were like “Um, I’m a virgin, you guys” and the response was “but you might still be pregnant so let’s do a test.”
That’s what everyone said happened at the UChicago care center too, but my experience was the opposite. One time I was there I told the nurse I had an IUD and she asked if it was for heavy periods. Another time a doctor asked me if the giant obvious hickey on my neck was a birthmark. Sex just didn’t occur to them.
Yep, this happened to lots of people at my (public, not-fancy, northern) school too.
yeah, the running joke at my fancy, private northeast school was “Sprained your ankle? You sure you’re not pregnant?” whenever a friend went to the health center.
Also the running joke at my midwestern state school. It had to be pregnancy or mono, there were no other medical conditions.
Yup, our nurse, too. You could be bleeding copiously from a limb and she’d still run through the dates and severity of your last few periods before she’d give you a plaster.
The University Health Center told my friend she tested positive for chlamydia. She and her boyfriend of two years had lost their virginity to each other and neither of them had had any other partners, PLUS her boyfriend’s screening came up negative. She insisted that there was no way she had chlamydia and they were like *shrug* The test doesn’t lie. So she got re-screened and of course it came up negative. OOPS.
I also went to college in the South & was made to take a pregnancy test very time I went in for my annual exam at the student clinic
Weird! I went to a college in the Pacific Northwest and they would ask sometimes if I were pregnant before prescribing anything, you know, like a doctor/nurse probably should, but they never had me take a pregnancy test (which is good, because I 100% could not have been pregnant.) I also usually came in with OBVIOUS flu symptoms or insane sinus infections, but still!
I transferred to a college in the Pac NW and in my several visits to the health center was never given a pregnancy test. They actually believed me when I said there wasn’t any chance I was pregnant.
I went to school in California, and they still tried to screen everyone who was there for any reason. They were nice about it though, and “I have never had sex” deterred them.
I asked why, and they said “the tests are cheap, it takes a moment, and the sooner we catch it the more options you have.” I guess I can understand that – public health must be exhausting, and if you can save your future self work and distress, it’s very tempting.
Also, some young people may have had bad or non-existent sex education, so they *could* be pregnant while insisting it’s impossible, but to have an attitude that assumes by default that all your patients are either stupid or lying is… not great.
I feel wiser now, and more in control, but I still am carrying this fear that when I start my part time grad school program next fall I will be in the same awful state as undergrad. It is hard to trust myself that I can be better.
I recently was rather stressed due to a housing situation, and my IBS came back full force after months of dormancy. Even now, feeling much calmer, it is sticking around making me associate food with being sick, once again. Sigh.
I also an enjoying all of your posts, thank you.
As someone who had the same fear, but seems to be doing kind of okay: it’s possible, and I have faith that you’ll figure it out. Grad school wants to eat you, but you can hold the line. Part-time sounds like an excellent way to do that; I’m officially full-time, but planned from the start to take two years for my “one” year master’s program, so it’s a laid-back “full-time”. It makes a difference. So, by planning ahead to let yourself go a little more slowly, you’re *already* doing better by your future self!
By part time I mean I am working full time and taking 2 classes a semester after work, for fall, spring, and summer semesters for three years. So I don’t actually think I am taking it slow, unfortunately 🙁
I’m doing that right now! It is not nearly as terrible as I thought it would be 🙂
‘“What if you’re having the Black Jesus?” she asked excitedly.’ HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH I may never stop laughing at this. This article is amazing. Before I found out that I was barren, I took a bunch of pregnancy tests, tripled up on birth control, and took the morning after pill (even though I had not yet had ‘intercourse’) because I was super pregnancy paranoid.
You are not alone; I was a super-pregnancy paranoid virgin before finding out that I was barren as well.
OMG maybe this is a thing?? I’m going to start telling extremely pregnancy anxious teens to get their ovaries looked at. Would have saved me a lot of anxiety, money, time and information superhighway research into exactly how possible it is to become pregnant from semen stained sheets.
I hope that there aren’t that many teens that were as pregnancy-anxious as I was. I don’t wish that kind of stress on anyone.
After I was well again, I joked around with my mother that my body willed itself into infertility. She was Not Amused.
“I’m pretty sure that I would not be the vessel chosen for that particular task.”
(snarfs Diet Coke)
A few years ago I worked a temp job that was so incredibly stressful that my period dried up. I knew 100% it was stress IN PART because i was so stressed out I hadn’t had sex in a few months. I took a pregnancy test anyway, first one ever. It was really good practice for later on “am I pregnant” hopes/fears (PROTIP: pee into a cup, dip the test. If you hold it in your stream of urine it sprays everywhere, like sticking your thumb over a garden hose.)
Or a spoon under the tap!
I have peed on my hand literally every time I have ever taken a pregnancy test, which is a lot of times. (I take pregnancy tests once a month like clockwork even though I’ve never skipped a period and am on birth control. I’m that scared of being pregnant.)
Even when I tried a couple times to do the cup method, I still peed on my hand somehow.
One of my college roommates got appendicitis our sophomore year and my boyfriend and I had to take her to the hospital. There, despite her VERY FIRM assurance that she was not and could not be pregnant, they insisted on doing an ultrasound to make sure. I get that people lie in medical situations, but it’s extra-shitty when you’re made to feel like the doctors don’t trust or believe you.
omg one of my friends went to the hospital with abdominal pains and her mostly white male doctors ordered, I kid you not, like 21 pregnancy tests, even though she told them she doesn’t fish that side of the pond. They also checked for sickle cell like 30 times.
My body sometimes reacts to stress by making me vomit first thing in the morning. I have a theory that it's a cunning ploy to make realise that whatever is going on is less stressful than being pregnant would be.
Reading Kant my junior year gave me canker sores and a rash.
Reading Kant my junior year gave me canker sores and a rash.
My college was known as The Place Where Fun Goes To Die (we tried to deny it, but we knew it to be true).