By Brianna Stevens | Assistant Editor
A student at MWCC smoked marijuana before class regularly, but realized that his grades were suffering. The student said, “It almost took over my life.” He said he would smoke before every class at one point. “All of them, didn’t matter. The classes I didn’t care about, didn’t need, I tried to keep it that way but eventually it just became so routine.”
The student told about his journey from his first four year school, and explained the reason he started smoking before class was because he was depressed. He said, “I did suffer from depression when I was younger, and then I noticed when I started smoking pot when I was like 18 years old that it started to go away, and then when I was at school and realized that I was more depressed, I started smoking more.” He said that smoking would reduce depression and subside anxiety before classes, so to achieve the state of mind he needed in order to go to class, he would smoke before.
He said, “I definitely would go in, take all the notes in class, pay attention like a normal student would, but then I’d go back to my room, open up my notebook and have no idea what I wrote down.” He would feel more mentally engaged, but when trying to study, he realized that his brain did not retain any of the information.
The student was faced with the reality of the situation when he applied to transfer, but he did not get in. “When I left [my previous school] and didn’t get into Umass Amherst, I told myself I needed to start getting my life straight.” That is when he came to MWCC.
He said, “I definitely feel like coming [to MWCC] was a good change and definitely needed,” as a life check. He stopped smoking before class completely because he realized it actually was not helping him succeed.
He said, “You’re not gonna do better in classes, there’s really no positives. You’re still not in the same state of mind as you would be if you were sober in class, paying attention, getting all that information in your head, looking at your notes and remembering them from class.”
“Other people say it calms them down and help focuses them, but I don’t believe that. Some people say that but then you look at them and they’re barely getting by.”
The student is on the right track to getting into UMass Amherst, and plans to do so as soon as possible. Looking back, he said, “I really wish I didn’t do it” because he felt like he did not take anything from his previous education at his first school and wishes he had just been able to wait to smoke.
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