Remember when we all thought high school was as stressful as life could get?

What we all wouldn't give to go back to the days of easy exams and countless busy work points.

It's that point in the semester where you are either ok with where your grades are or struggling to pull them up before finals approach so you don't have to bank your whole grade on a huge exam. I get it, it's rough.

The time spent studying for a test you aren't positive you'll pass, the tears over endless wrong statistics problem answers, the three-hour screen staring sessions when you don't know how to begin a paper that's due in a few days. You lay in bed at night, counting down the days until summer and stress-free months.

But let me tell you something.

Your life doesn't depend on your GPA. College is difficult, it's meant to be that way to prepare us for the real world and our future careers. If you fail that exam, the sun will still rise tomorrow. If you get a C in that class, you will still get a great job that you love someday. We put so much on grades and GPA that we forget the most important thing we are working towards.

Our dreams.

So what, you don't have a perfect 4.0. Not everyone can be a genius in school. Your grades don't define you and neither does your GPA. What defines you is the amount of effort you put forth toward your future, and if you're trying your hardest and still not succeeding, at least you can say there is nothing more you could've done. Your GPA and grades don't define your character, your personality, your drive or anything else that truly counts. Our society puts so much stress on numbers that we forget what really counts in life.

We all go through a place in our lives when we believe we will not succeed and feel like a failure. It's the most difficult and discouraging thing in the world, but I promise that someday, you will look back on your struggles when you're standing atop your success and know it was all worth the pain.