You catch yourself walking home late one evening, navigating your way through the darkness as quickly as humanly possible. The wind rustles the dead leaves and the moon casts an eerie glow upon the uneven pavement.

A twig breaks, a shadow toys with your peripheral vision. The hairs on the back of your neck bristle and goose bumps race down your spine.

Although your shadowy culprit is revealed to be nothing short of a harmless squirrel, a wave of panic shudders over your frame and your brain spirals into a dark realm of fear and anxiety. You have just experienced paranoia.

While typical paranoia sufferers experience harrowing delusions and imagined persecution, small scale occurrences of paranoia affect individuals on a daily basis. The feeling of being followed, the sensation of being watched, and certain perceptual experiences can wreck havoc on our brains. Our hearts race within our chests, our palms sweat, our pupils dilate and flight-or-fight takes over should the need for self-defense become present.

Although physical situations are no longer the sole triggers of paranoia, college life presents numerous opportunities for stress induced paranoia.

So picture this scenario instead: You’re about to graduate with a degree you do not understand, with more debt than job opportunities and a future that’s as blank as your stare in a 200-person lecture. Your name is called for you to walk; in your hand is a piece of paper. The culmination of four (or more) years of blood, sweat, tears and money. A university certification in an area for which you hold no interest.

Your mind is racing with thoughts of your future. You begin to sweat and your nerves are having seizures up and down your spine. Sound familiar?

The future is a daunting and formidable opponent, for which most individuals are ill-equipped. Living in an age where we are raised in an environment of heightened suspension, it is no small wonder that minor occurrences of daily paranoia occur. Some individuals even allow these would-be normal, stressors to control their thoughts, eventually evolving into delusions. This progression can lead to personality disorders and schizophrenia. I am in no way saying that by simply freaking out over your future, you are likely to develop a personality disorder – it only occurs in a slim portion of the population.

So is the paranoia we think we are experiencing when we “feel eyes upon us,” or “sense someone following us,” true paranoia? Or could this be an overactive psyche magnifying the stressors in our lives?

Anxiety and fear can occur with or without paranoia; a particularly terrifying teacher may be experiencing a foul mood causing fear to be struck into the hearts of his or her students. A student may be facing an exam they are under-prepared for, thus resulting in high anxiety.

The abnormality comes when the student begins to believe the teacher is so evil, he or she is sending spirits to torture them in the night. Laughable as this may seem, delusions of persecution are often far-fetched and are always serious. Another factor to take into account is whether or not the student has been ingesting psychotropic or hallucinogenic drugs, seeing as how drugs of this nature have a tendency to produce fantastic delusions when taken in the right amount.

“All day long I think of things, but nothing seems to satisfy, I think I’ll lose my mind.” Ozzy presents a credible example, in that when people are paranoid, obsessive thoughts consume their daily habits. Although not as severe, minor paranoia can also become a thorn in one’s side, a constant prodding of worry and second guessing. It’s not wrong to label your feelings as paranoid if your unstable ex-lover is stalking you via Facebook, but stressing over a final exam should probably remain classified as simple anxiety. The experience of anxiety and the experience of paranoia are similar, and often times share symptoms, making it difficult to discern one from the other.

The line is drawn though when the anxiety about taking a test evolves into an irrational belief that the professor is slowly devouring your soul through the overheard projector above your seat in class. So you have my permission to freak out over soul-devouring professors, just try not to sweat the small stuff.