With May beginning Mental Health Awareness Month, colleges across the United States begin their finals week. Students will stress for days all over a single test that could make or break their grades.

They will lose sleep, rely on coffee and Red Bull, and put their physical and mental health on the backburner, as long as they can get a high enough score to get whatever they are trying to achieve. For many, a 4.0 GPA is unattainable, and for others, maintaining their 4.0 GPA stresses them out beyond belief.

In case anyone has not realized, that is a huge problem. Why do we, as students, not realize that treating ourselves like absolute crap at the end of the semester is not going to help us?

Losing sleep is not going to make us more attentive. In fact, we will have less focus and be extremely tired throughout the day. Red Bull and coffee are fine, but drinking three Ventis within a 24-hour period is definitely not helping us.

Putting your physical and mental health at risk for an entire week has devastating effects on our bodies, yet we consistently go ahead and do it because we feel like we need to, and we do not.

Sure, grades are important, but they are not the end all, be all of our college experience. We should strive for the best grades possible, but when we get to the point of treating ourselves like crap, what is the point?

That class is not going to matter in the next five years. That one paper will not matter if you can pass the class. C's get degrees. While that should definitely not be your motto for every single class you take, you should not put yourself at risk for every single class.

Finals are important, but do not risk your mental health for something so arbitrary.