I have these dreams of what I want to accomplish after college and how I am going to achieve them. I’m sure most of us do. I am grinding through the exams, papers, and assignments like an endless loop filled with deadline after deadline. I need to find an internship. No matter how tired I am, I have to keep going. My goals aren’t going to accomplish themselves. Nothing below an A will ever be enough. I have to keep going. I have to keep my GPA. I need to keep studying. I need to do better.
That’s a glimpse inside of my mind a few weeks ago during the peak of my sophomore slump. With each additional deadline I would descend into a spiral of stress and overload. On the outside it seemed as if I was extremely driven, but in reality it was all just to prove to myself that I was good enough. Everyone told me “it’s just stress, you’ll get over it.” Nobody was pressuring me to get straight A’s or to keep a high GPA, it was my own pressure. In fact, I think it was because I had nobody pressuring me that I felt that I had to perform well. My parents trust me to put in the effort and do my best. I wanted everyone to see that I can thrive in college. I was able to push aside everything in my head in order to attempt to perform at the level that I had expected of myself. Anything below that expectation was a failure.
Spring break couldn’t have come at a better time. As soon as the anxiety of school faded from my life I was able to take a step back and realize how deep I was into my downward spiral. I had been firing on all cylinders that I never had the capacity to feel anything other than stress. The whole week of no classes, deadlines, and exams gave me a chance to reflect on how I had let myself get this worked up over school and my future.
We are on a floating rock.
Accomplishing my goals is important to me, but it can’t be everything. It doesn’t matter if I get straight A’s as long as I’m learning and growing. It doesn’t matter if I end up living in a specific city after college because I will end up where I need to be.
I want to experience being in college without the highlight being how stressed I was over exams and assignments that will have no impact on me in a year. Sure, a high GPA is nice, but what about going out with my friends? What about having the energy to be able to go skiing? As long as I put in effort into what I am doing I will be just fine after college. There is so much more to the college experience beyond having multiple crashouts over grades. My goals aren’t going to accomplish themselves, but the stress won’t accomplish them either.