I did what every college student has done in the past couple of days - I got on my computer to figure out exactly what I need to make on each of my finals to make a decent grade in the class. Let me tell you something: this semester, I would rather have jumped off of a cliff than go to class every single day. But here I am with less than two weeks left, and somehow, I'm still alive.

Over Thanksgiving break, all I did was study for a test that I had the Monday we returned to classes. Would you even consider that a break? Yeah, me either. I got this sense of anxiety that rushed through my body Sunday afternoon driving back to Starkville. What if I fail every single final? What if I study so much for one test I forget all the information for the others? What if I go into the final with an A, and then fail the final and get a B in the class? I'm sure every college student has felt all these things at one time another, but this time it was kind of different for me.

I turned on KLove as loud as it would go and thought about how in the long run, my GPA does not make me a terrible person, and it doesn't reflect my intelligence. It means that I have tried my best in all of my classes, and the grade I would make would not be in my control anymore. Yes, I probably could have studied for Test 1 a little harder, but the past is the past, and I can't change it now. My GPA is just a number that I cannot change when those final grades are turned in. It is a number that does not define me as a person.

I told myself that in 10 years, it won't matter that I stayed up all night cramming for a test that I ended up making a 60% on. I will probably laugh at myself over Christmas break thinking how stupid I was staying up all night studying for a test I knew I could not pass. So if you think you are alone in this, trust me, you're not - there's me, the girl crying next to you in the library, and everyone else who is pulling an all-nighter knowing that it won't help. We are all in this together.