Obsessive compulsive disorder, often shortened to OCD, is defined by the National Institute on Mental Health as a long lasting disorder in which a person experiences uncontrollable and recurring thoughts (obsessions), engages in repetitive behaviors (compulsions) or both. OCD is classified as an anxiety disorder. According to the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, OCD impacts 2.5 million adults in the US, or 1.2% of the US population. Slightly more women are affected by OCD than men. OCD often begins in childhood or early adolescence. Medications may be able to help with obsessions
and compulsions, but OCD cannot be cured. Hopkins Medicine states other anxiety problems such as
depression, eating disorders, or substance use disorder may occur with OCD.
  Obsessional thoughts can look like: fear of contamination by people or the environment, intrusive religious thoughts or fears, extreme concern with order and precision, and fear of losing something important. Obsessions are the intrusive thoughts which often invades the minds of people with OCD . Compulsions, on the other hand. are carrying out actions because of obsessive thoughts. This can look like mental rituals, ritualized hand washing, showering, or brushing teeth, repeated cleaning, ordering things in a different way, and rituals related to numbers and counting.
I have experienced OCD through, making sure everything is perfectly aligned in the fridge, checking to make sure the hair iron in unplugged multiple times and driving back home to check even though I’m certain I unplugged it, and worried that if something isn’t organized a certain way, something bad will
happen.
  As a student, having OCD has impacted my life in many ways. It does not only impact my personal
life, but my school life as well. Personally, I would experience obsession over my notes and how they looked. If they didn’t look perfectly neat like how I wanted them to, I would rewrite them. This caused me to rewrite pages upon pages of notes. This process was extremely time consuming and mentally
exhausting, as I was concerned more with how my notes looked than the material I was trying to  understand.                                                                                                 I have also experienced an intense fixation on germs and contamination. This would come into conflict at my job, where I work in the food service industry. I have been on multiple medications to try and reduce my symptoms of OCD, but I have found they only work to a certain extent. Having also experienced depression, it has been hard to find a medication that helps both disorders. One medicine might be really effective in treating my OCD, but not my depression. I think a part of this is because my OCD/anxiety keeps me going to a certain extent. While my
depression may cause me to have very little motivation, my anxiety is telling me that if I don’t try harder in school, I will be a failure. I think my OCD/anxiety and depression depend on each other a little bit, and
balance the other one out.
  What has helped me the most is talking about it to a professional. She reminds me that my intrusive thoughts have no truth to them.