For all of those who finished your first or even your last finals week, I am proud of you.
Even if we have only talked for a few minutes or have never even met I know how you feel. I know what it's like to spend all your waking hours at class and all the moments supposed to be getting a good night's sleep awake because you need to spend all your time to making this paper, this project perfect.
You might say "there is not enough time" or "I cannot possibly get this done," well you're right there is not enough time but if you remember to pace yourself and don't leave assignments until the last minute you will do a thousand times better than if you crammed everything in the night before. You might even tell yourself that you don't need a break or a meal because that will give you more time to work on something.
During finals, I have skipped meals and I never gave myself any breaks, but looking back a half an hour to eat something was not the end of the world and would not make me waste time. These silent moments of relaxing will give your brain time to breathe and recover enough to give you energy to start back up again. Food is important!! Even if it is something small.
I am here to tell you that staying up all night and stressing yourself over a lousy letter is not worth the pain (emotional or physical).
It is not worth your health over (trust me, your brain and head will thank me).
Your mental health is something that not only contains all your emotions and memories, but it is a place where inner demons may tell you that you are failure. They may tell you aren't good enough. I am not saying you should ignore them, but let the voices make you stronger and more confident that you can do it!
Even accept that breaks involving brief moments of escape into the world of Netflix or Facebook is not going to kill you. Let yourself into the world of...
I listened to the voices and always saw them as negative, but I think if I let them defeat me I never would have graduated college let alone high school. The voices only make you stronger. I know exactly what it did to me and I can tell you that this grade that you are desperately stretching your whole self for is not worth it.
I mean you can believe that these grades are important and is the difference between life and death or you can be willing to ask for help. Helping others might even help you solve something that you might have been struggling with your own paper or project.
As someone who had spent approximately 3,240 days in school, I came to realize as I was graduating that these grades I strived for were obtainable if I just believed these assignments were nothing but creative experiments.
The experiments would be successful when I finished on time and handed it in. After that, the grade or the teacher's feelings on said project or paper was out of my control. I could not control how they react with each other or if they would even work together. All I knew was that these experiments are meant to fail so if it was meant to be that I did not succeed then feel free to fail me.
Let yourself make mistakes because you can only learn and grow from them. Let yourself crumble so you can rebuild. Life is about construction and if you let it destroy you to your foundation there will be nothing left but a fresh start...tomorrow.
Be proud of yourself that you survived!
NOW, GO TO SLEEP!
