As I am about to enter my second semester of my freshman year at college, I look back at the past year and reminisce on what happened. I think about all those nights in high school where I stayed up until the early morning hours doing extra work trying to be number one and I realized I'm not that person anymore. The biggest lesson that I took away from my first semester of college is that I don't have to be number one and I'm perfectly okay with that.

In high school I would always try to be number one and be on top no matter what extra work I had to do. Getting a B in a class or anything below a ninety would crush me. When I would get what I considered these "bad grades" I would think really low of my self which wasn't healthy in any way. My senior class was relatively small and I went to a high school where being smart and having the top grades was celebrated, so I felt like I always had to prove myself. Everyone would some how find out our classmates GPA, SAT/ACT scores and overall academic performance. Being number one was especially important when applying for colleges, which meant spending hundreds of dollars on tutors, test prep tutors and other educational resources. However, when I entered college, my whole perspective changed.

I realized that I can be average and still end up with a pretty bright future. I'm not saying that you should stop studying or stop doing your work. I'm saying that you don't have to stress yourself to a breaking point to be on top. I'm okay with being average because I do the best that I can. My best might not be getting hundreds on everything but it is all that I can put into the work. I can study for a professors test for a month and still do average on the test but that doesn't mean that I didn't prepare for it. In high school I would be so beat up about a bad score but now I am more satisfied knowing that I did the best that I could because test don't define how smart you are. In college I learned that I don't have to prove myself to my classmates because I am the person who has the most say in my future and everybody has a different standard of how they want to perform and you don't have to have that same standard.

Another reason why I'm okay with not being number one is because of how much of a happier/healthier person I've become since I realized it. Instead of those nights were I would stay up to cram for a test, I get a good number of sleeping hours which results in me being more alert for assignments. Having a clearer mind allows me to learn more. I don't get so upset when I don't get a high score because I know that I did the best that I could and nobody could tell me otherwise. I'm okay with not being number one because it's how I want to live my life. You don't have to be on top to have an amazing future; You are going to have one as long as you try the best that you could.