I've heard it all before. "Your GPA does not define you." Then why am I sitting here staring at my transcript in disappointment and defeat?

My first couple of semesters in college were actually decent. I was making high grades and had above a 3.5 cumulative GPA. And then sophomore year happened.

The fall semester of my second year was rough. Between personal matters and taking two of the hardest classes in my degree plan, my grades suffered. And with that went my high GPA.

It's honestly unfair how much one bad semester actually effects your overall grade average. I went from a 3.6 to a 3.0 all in the matter of 3 months. And no matter how hard I worked to raise it, it just sort of plateaued.

Here I am finishing up the fall semester of my third year with a semester GPA that will once again drag my cumulative average down, even by just a point. And if I would have done just a mere 3 points better on one of my finals to give me an A in the class instead of a B, I would have been able to keep my GPA right where it was. That, my friends, is one of the worst things about college. The what-if's.

I admitted defeat. After final grades came out, I felt the disappointment. How can I think of my college career as a success when my GPA says otherwise? And that's when I realized that all of those times I heard "your GPA does not define you" was actually right.

Your GPA DOES NOT define you. Your GPA does not show the struggle of balancing multiple different classes with organizations and other social activities. Your GPA does not show the countless numbers of hours you studied for an exam, only to bomb it once again. Your GPA does not show the confidence you felt after walking out of an exam, only to find that you actually failed it by a lot. Your GPA does not show all of the effort you put in to your hardest class, only to barely come out with a C. Your GPA does not show the tutoring and the homework and the multiple YouTube videos you endured to try and understand exactly what is going on in your classes.

Your GPA will never be able to convey the amount of work you put in to each one of your classes, even if the outcome wasn't what you wanted it to be. Your grades do not define you. Your degree does. Your degree shows that you suffered through 120+ credit hours to obtain your sought after education. Your degree shows that you are able to handle challenges no matter the struggles you may have to endure. Your degree shows that all of those grades, no matter good or bad, were all worth it.

And after you walk across that stage and have that diploma in your hand, you won't remember the C you got in Accounting. You'll remember the ample amounts of effort you put in to being able to say that you graduated from the best university in the world. And that is something worth smiling about.