Staying Steady When Things Get Hard: Building Resilience in College
Author: Kimberly Tierney, Director of Academic Coaching
Read time: 4 minutes
This content was aided by the OpenAI language model Assistant. Learn more at https://openai.com/.
College can be exciting, but it can also be messy, unpredictable, and hard. That’s not a sign that something is wrong with you. It’s a sign that you’re growing. Learning to face difficulties is part of what college is all about!
Resilience is the flipside of anxiety. When you learn to face challenges instead of avoiding them, you give your brain evidence that you can handle discomfort. Every time you recover from a setback, you build competence and confidence.
A little disappointment, in other words, is not a failure. It’s practice.
Why Struggle Matters
We don’t build strength by avoiding heavy things. We build it by lifting them. The same is true for mental and emotional resilience.
When students are shielded from every setback, they miss the chance to experience what psychologist Robert Brooks calls “islands of competence,” those moments when we face difficulty, adapt, and discover that we’re capable of more than we thought.
Facing challenges teaches three essential skills:
Perspective – Not everything has to go perfectly for things to turn out well.
Persistence – Progress often looks like two steps forward, one step back.
Recovery – Bouncing back after a hard moment builds long-term confidence.
From Setback to Comeback
When things get tough, your first reaction might be frustration or self-doubt. That’s normal. The goal isn’t to avoid those feelings but to move through them with self-compassion and strategy.
Try this mindset shift:
Instead of “I blew it,” think “That didn’t go as planned, what can I learn?”
Instead of “I’m falling behind,” think “I’m adjusting my pace.”
Instead of “I’m bad at this,” think “I’m still practicing.”
This trial-and-error approach turns mistakes into feedback and failure into learning.
Stay Grounded in the Present
When anxiety spikes, it’s usually because we’re jumping too far ahead. Focusing on what’s happening now (and the next now) helps bring things back into focus. Ask yourself:
What’s one thing I can do today to move forward?
What small action would help me feel a bit more in control?
Even the smallest progress, sending an email, organizing notes, starting a paragraph, can reduce stress and reignite momentum.
Connected Independence
Resilience doesn’t mean doing everything alone. It means learning when to lean in and when to lean on others.
At Tierney Education, we call this connected independence: you don’t have to do it on your own, but you can’t have someone else do it for you either.
That might look like:
Going to office hours to ask for clarification.
Talking with a mentor or friend who believes in you.
Using campus supports like tutoring, counseling, or coaching when you need them.
Asking for help is not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of awareness.
Resilience Is a Practice
Every time you face a challenge and recover, you strengthen your ability to handle the next one. Life isn’t supposed to be easy, it’s supposed to be meaningful.
Building resilience means learning to trust that you can do hard things, that setbacks are temporary, and that growth often hides behind discomfort.
So the next time college feels overwhelming, remind yourself:
You’ve handled hard things before.
You’re handling something hard right now.
And you’re growing stronger every time you do.
