College. How did we get here? It seemed as if just yesterday we were walking on the gravel path of small square tiles holding our mother and/or father's hands, afraid to let go into the "real world." But little did we know, elementary school was nothing compared to middle school with its vicious cliques and mean girls, high school with its overpowering teachers and overpowering stuck up student body presidents, and College, the place where everybody wants to go but then underestimates its strong scent of challenging classes along with challenging professors, or even negligent ones.

I feel as if I was the only one out of most people I know that started college off with a bad note.

But what can I say? I underestimated Stony Brook's challenging intro 100 level classes. I slacked off, and focused more on events and finding those extracurricular clubs that I can sharpen my passion for photography and writing more. I joined Odyssey freshman year of college, and even though that is a huge pro that I can say as of today, it was also a factor that made me push my studies to the last of my list. I came into college undecided, and only a few weeks later decided I wanted to be an economics major. On top of that, I added two minors because I didn't want to be someone who wanted to be an economist, I wanted to have an interdisciplinary background. STEM Major, a STEM minor, and another arts minor.

Only later into college, I realized that economics wasn't something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And while others may tell me that I'm wasting my life with a degree that I'm not even going to want to do in the future, it did teach me a very valuable lesson. It taught me to not give it up and jump around finding something that I really enjoyed. Because there was no such thing. My passion for the arts was something that Stony Brook did not offer as a major at the time, and I didn't feel the need to drop my major and start all over. And while economics may not be the best decision I had chosen for myself, while the classes are all the more challenging with extremely low curves that make it impossible for students to get As in, I look at my GPA, and even though I grimace at it, I look at it simultaneously knowing that I made it through.

Most people would have given up and switched their major, but I stuck with mine. And like I said, even though it may be very stupid and "a waste of time," I see it as a lesson learned. I paired my major with two minors, that may not only be academically empowering but at the same time, push my way to get into a tier grad school and be one step closer to my career path: Marketing and Public Relations.

Getting high GPAs are hoaxes, especially if you're just taking meaningless and easy classes just to get that 4.0.

If I have a low GPA because of my willingness to take challenging classes and overexerting myself, that's worth more than anything else.

Passion is something that so many people tend to forget, and that's understandable especially in this day and age where everyone wants to get all those A's piled up on their transcript. I mean, kudos to those who take challenging classes and still end up getting As and enjoying what they're taking. I'm not undermining those people at all. I just know that I'm not them, but I believe having passion is something that is most important. There's a reason we need to have an interview (for the most part), face to face. There's a reason a personal essay and letters of recommendation are required for grad school. If grades are indeed the only thing that matters, and something that means SOOO much, how come some CEOs that we know of today did not have a perfect academic transcript?

It's time to stop the fanatics and the hype with the perfect GPA determining the perfect student. All this overhype just stresses all of us out. It's seriously time to stop the numbers determining our ability to succeed in the world and our intelligence and let our actions do the talking.