I was that girl in high school who everyone hated for crying when I received a B on an exam. Though others perceived my disappointment as an overreaction to a meaningless mark, one amongst the hundreds we received in high school, I would feel a crushing sense of failure. I would think, “I could have done better” or, “How will this affect my future?” Throughout lower school, middle school, and high school, I grappled with the familiar struggles of adolescence. I felt awkward, socially inept, too tall, too loud, too quiet, too average, too whatever. These insecurities were not unique to me, and every kid finds their own way to deal with the issues that accompany teenage-hood. My refuge came from my grades – they were something that I could control, something I could work towards, something that would reflect not my personality, my looks, or my perceived inadequacies, but rather my ambition and determination. Even as I grew older and grew out of the anxieties that plagued my middle school and early high school experience, I used grades as a determinant for my happiness and, ultimately, my future. This is the reason why I cried over a B on a pre-calculus test, or an 86 on that English essay I had slaved over. I interpreted anything less than an A as a failure, as something that would prohibit me from getting a good GPA, thus getting into a good college, thus getting a good job, and thus being happy. This mentality scared me into staying up until 3 a.m. perfecting an already good assignment, or skipping lunch to run around my school looking for teachers to confirm answers to questions to which I was already pretty sure I knew the answers. There were 65 kids in my grade at my small school and twelve of us applied to Michigan, a school I had always known as my dream school. Valuing grades as the most important thing in my life was more of a necessity than a choice when, for lack of a better word, I was competing with so many kids that may also want to go to Michigan.
As with most things in life, everything worked out. Those of us who wanted to go to Michigan were accepted, and those who applied early decision elsewhere, or applied somewhere for scholarships, or had a different dream school, were accepted to their college of choice. The nights spent crying over the uncertainties of my future, the mornings spent sick with worry over an upcoming exam, the hours spent ensuring I got the A instead of the A- all became distant memories, something to be forgotten about because it had been worth it, it had led me to where I wanted to be, and isn’t that what mattered?
Though these high school memories became muted reminders of what had led me to college, upon arriving at Michigan I maintained this mentality of grades being the end-all-be-all of life. Now I was at Michigan! My dream school! Everything I had wanted! This happiness and relief, however, did not last long. I soon realized that basically everyone at Michigan had the same mindset as I did in high school, and now I was not competing with high school classmates to get into Michigan, but rather competing with Michigan classmates for admissions into clubs, for internships, for jobs. I reverted back to using my grades as the basis for how my life was at college: if I was succeeding and having the college experience I was supposed to.
Furthermore, I used schoolwork and grades as a shield to hide behind to pretend that freshman year was easy and great and everything I wanted it to be. Now looking back, freshman year brought out a lot of the same feelings I felt throughout middle school and high school. I felt awkward and overwhelmed, not smart enough, not dedicated enough, not social enough, not adjusted enough. I imagined that everyone around me had perfect lives, effortlessly depicted through fun Snapchat stories and Facebook photos. I struggled with feeling as if I should be doing something different. So, I did what I had done in high school – I threw myself into work, staying at the UGLi until 3 a.m. and spending every moment outside of class in office hours, or the library, or doing readings. I worked the hardest I ever had. And even though I told myself it was so I could get the best grades possible, part of it was because I just wasn’t sure what else to do.
I’m now in the last weeks of my sophomore year, and for the first time in my life, my mentality has changed. I still work just as hard, and I still spend some nights up until 3 a.m., and I still worry about my future and the impact my grades will have on it. I still value my GPA as something crucial to my future, and I still feel a pang after every bad grade (looking at you Econ 101, the bane of my existence). But I don’t cry anymore after getting a B on an exam, because college is hard. And some nights I’d rather take the night off from work to hang out in the living room of my house, laughing until my stomach hurts with my best friends and going to sleep with my heart feeling full. I don’t mean to sound cliché and elaborate on my journey through college, about how I struggled for a while freshman year but pushed myself out my comfort zone and made the best friends and the best memories and a life for myself that I really love. I guess I do sound cliché, but that’s okay.
A few weeks ago, I was scrolling through Facebook, and a photo popped up on my timeline, and it had a phrase on it that really stuck with me. It said, “The 5 For 5 Rule: Don’t spend more than 5 minutes worrying about something that won’t matter 5 years from now.” That’s the mentality that I’m now trying to adapt. Especially with finals approaching, I feel myself beginning to feel the fear and the weight of expectations that accompanies this semester’s impending GPA. For the first time, I’m trying to not let this fear consume me. I’m going to work hard and try my best, and accept that that is the best I can do. I’m trying to embrace that college is a time for learning not only statistics and psychology, but also about failing and about accepting this failure not as a reflection of who I am, but as an opportunity for growth and adaptation. I know I know, I sound preachy and it’s easier said than done.
To be a little less dramatic, this is basically what I’m trying to say: In five years, it won’t matter if my GPA from my second semester of sophomore year is .04 points less than what I wanted it to be because I spent a few hours on a beautiful 70-degree spring day in Ann Arbor laying in the law quad and reading a book instead of re-watching another lecture. At least I hope it won’t, and I don’t really think I’m going to want to be doing something for which that does matter. I think in five years, when I’m hopefully doing something I love but working nonetheless, I’m going to want to look back at the more carefree days of college, of being able to spend a Saturday lazily laughing with my friends and laying on our lawn, or spontaneously going on an adventure. I’m going to want to think, “Remember when fifteen of us spent the night watching Hairspray and belting out the songs until we lost our voices?” not, “Remember when I wrote five drafts of an essay on who-knows-what for a distribution class I wasn’t really interested in that doesn’t matter to me at all now.” I’m still trying to figure out the right balance between school and life, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get it perfectly right. For now, I’m just trying to follow the advice I found scrolling through Facebook.
Images Courtesy of: The University of Oregon and Louisiana Bible College