Here’s to the start of a new semester.

Maybe it’s your first, maybe it’s your last, or maybe you’re somewhere caught in the middle.

Perhaps you’re enthusiastic to get back to your friends, your dorm, and your normal routine.

Or perhaps you’re nervous: unsure of how easy or difficult your new classes will be, anxious to see how your GPA will hold up, or even uncertain if you will financially be able to make it through another semester.No matter where you stand, allow me to give you a simple tidbit of encouragement: you will survive, and everything will fall into place in the end. I promise. As cliché as it sounds, isn’t it funny that all things seem to happen for a reason and that everything always works out perfectly in the end? Despite having those moments of despair, stress, and uncertainty, you’ve managed to make it this far-you’re living, breathing proof that anything can be overcome as long as you hang in there!

This semester,make the most of everything. I feel as though we all have these great intentions at the beginning of each semester, only to start falling short as the weeks drag on. We try too hard and become overwhelmed, so we stop trying. We forget our goals that we had set for ourselves: the grade-related goals, the personal goals, the social goals, and so forth. Why is it so easy to abandon our good plans and intentions? Maybe it’s because we set far too many for ourselves. We start setting so many goals that in the moment seem like a reasonable amount, but when we begin attempting to tackle them all, it becomes overwhelming and so easy to say “forget it” and give up altogether. Instead of striving to reach perfection, I challenge you to set reasonable and reachable goals and expectations for yourself in this fresh, new semester.Maintaining a 4.0 for your entire college career? Probably not reasonable. Make it a plan to dedicate more time to your more difficult classes? Reasonable.

Strive for greatness, but also be gentle with yourself and realize that perfection can never be reached this is a lesson I am still learning, and it is certainly not easy. As a perfectionist myself, it seems almost hypocritical of me to tell you to do these things, but I feel as though we all have a little bit of perfectionist in us that strives for a flawless semester and college experience overall.
But the moment that we realize that we are all fallible and human, we can further understand that, because of our human nature, perfection can never be reached-so why keep aiming for it? Strive for progress rather than perfection.Strive for personal improvement and development rather than the unobtainable. Strive to be better than the student you were last semester, not to be better than your roommate, your friend, or the smart girl sitting beside you in your advanced economics class.

So work hard this semester, but don’t forget to be easy on yourself. Make the most of everything while you shoot for those meaningful and reachable goals, be the best version of you that you can be, and always remember that everything will work out perfectly according to God’s unique plan for you!