The Good News is it Gets Better: How I Learned The Nescessity of Mental Health and Happiness as a Physicist

Chloe Tovar is a first-year space physics doctoral student at the University of New Hampshire. In this paper she will give insight into her background and how it led to an unhealthy relationship between her well being and learning and how she overcame her struggles. She will talk about how her experience with abuse, a toxic environment in her high school band program, and chronic illnesses set her up for struggles with depression and anxiety in her undergraduate years. Further, she wants to highlight the experiences she's had in college, from being mistreated by some professors and feeling the crushing stress of getting good grades to rarely feeling like what she was doing was enough. She wants to share how she overcame her struggles and unlearned her negative thought processes to successfully graduate with a B.S. in Physics. She will highlight the immeasurable value of having support systems for students of any age that help teach and reinforce to the student that their worth does not come from their grades but rather is inherent to them as a person. She hopes to be an example for others that healing, success, and happiness are possible.