I just want to start off by saying that everything is going to be OK. How many of you often find yourself wondering if you are ever going to succeed? Who else out there wonders if the stress will ever fade away? When will the day come that we take our last exam, or write our last paper? When will we receive the degree that tremendous amount of time and energy has been so eagerly treading toward for years?
We are bombarded with work from the day we step foot into our very first undergraduate course. There will come times when you find yourself up at the oddest hours of the morning, sitting by yourself and stressing out about that next exam that haunts you every night as you are eagerly trying to fall asleep, as to only to escape the stresses of life for a few hours.
I just want to remind everyone out there to take a step back and take a deep breath. We are our own worst enemies and we psych ourselves out. The most important thing to do is remain positive in the darkest of storms that cloud our lives and make us feel hopeless. It is not about how hard life knocks us down. What matters is how fast we get back up. You need to keep pushing forward even though you don't think you can, because I am here to tell you that you can. We all fail at times, but that doesn't mean we are a failure. It just means we slipped up.
Remember not to overreact to one bad grade, because it is, in fact, not the end of the world. Remember not to shelter yourself with books and computer screens. Remember to get outside, clear your mind, do something that is going to bring you to your very own nirvana. Go into every exam with the most optimism possible, and believe in getting that A that you know you can get. Most importantly, believe in yourself. These are the greatest years of our lives, so let's live them to their greatest potential. Don't look back one day and wonder "what if?" Never be afraid of falling short. If you never try, you will never realize just how strong you are. Never lose focus of what matters. Just because you slip up doesn't mean you wont get that dream job you've wanted since you were an adolescent, confused about what living in the real world was about. Don't worry about not finding yourself, because this is the place to do it. Branch out, explore, discover yourself in something more than academics.
You are going to be stressed, and it is OK. You are going to mess up, and it is okay. If you mess up, think about how you can do better next time and don't dwell on what already happened. It's something you cannot change. Life is full of obstacles and quite often we find ourselves lost in a cloudy abyss, unaware of what is going to happen. There will come a day where we will look back and wonder what it was that we were ever even worried about in the first place.
