In October 2024, I stood at a podium and tried to compress a lifetime of memories into a five-minute eulogy for my stepdad. I spoke about his steadiness, how he showed up quietly and consistently, without needing recognition. What I didn’t say was how afraid I was to return to campus without calling to hear his voice each week.
Two weeks later, I did exactly that.
The sidewalks were crowded. My phone buzzed with reminders about missed assignments and upcoming exams. The semester had continued while I was gone. College does not pause for grief, and that reality is scary when you lose a parent during this season of life.
Grief rarely aligns with academic calendars. It interrupts progress, disrupts focus, and complicates performance at a time when productivity is expected. Research confirms what many grieving students already feel. The American College Health Association consistently reports that stress, anxiety, and depression are leading factors affecting academic performance. A loss of life can intensify all three. Clinical research published through the U.S. National Library of Medicine has also found that grief can disrupt attention, memory, and executive functioning in the months following a loss.
When I sat in my first class back and realized I had not absorbed the last 10 minutes of the lecture, it wasn’t due to my inability, it was a reminder of how grief affects the brain.
I remember opening my laptop and staring at assignments. My body was present, but my mind was somewhere else. Two weeks earlier, I had been writing a eulogy. Now, I was catching up on coursework, and the contrast felt surreal.
Campus culture prioritizes applying for internships, leadership roles, and writing resumes. There is constant pressure to stay on track. Grief does not respect those timelines. It resurfaces unexpectedly, on random Tuesday afternoons or quiet drives home from class. Often, the hardest moments are not public ones. They are the evenings when everything is still, and the absence feels loud.
There is also a feeling of guilt that comes with a loss. Guilt for laughing with friends. Guilt for falling behind. Guilt for continuing forward when someone who shaped you will not see the outcome. But psychological research emphasizes that healthy grieving does not mean waiting to move forward in life.
Growth and grief coexist, and moving forward is not a betrayal, but rather exciting.
Communicating with professors became one of the most important steps I took. The first email I sent felt weak. I worried about sounding incapable. Instead, I received compassion. That response did not erase my grief, but it eased the pressure of pretending I was okay.
Grief in college can feel invisible. Routines continue and exams remain scheduled. You may feel like you are carrying something fragile through spaces that expect normalcy. Research helps reframe cognitive brain fog and fatigue as documented responses to loss, rather than as personal failure.
Over time, grief changes. It does not disappear, but it softens. Memories that once felt unbearable begin to bring happiness.Returning to campus two weeks later did not mean I was ready. It meant that I was trying. Some days, trying meant full participation. Other days, it meant simply attending class.
If you are grieving a parent while in college, please know that you are not behind, dramatic, or failing. Instead you are navigating something that changes you.
You can carry loss and still carry ambition. You can sit in a lecture with a heavy heart and still build a future for yourself.
Grief may walk back to campus with you, but it does not get to write the rest of your story. Take it one class at a time, one assignment at a time, and one breath at a time. That is enough.