I’m the first person to get worked up over the most benign problems in my day to day life. Recently at some of my many weekly meetings I’ve been hearing the same phrase to help me relax. “Is this going to ruin your collegiate career?” Normally the answer is no, because we are all dramatic college kids who think each decision we make is going to affect the rest of our lives. We are in a huge period of transition, so sometimes this is the case, but we have to step back and take a second to separate the important from the not so important.
When a college student gets ONE bad test back it weighs on them for the rest of the day. We immediately forget how well we did on the first test of the semester, and only focus on how this one piece of paper is bringing us down from a A to a B. First off, a B is an awesome grade and the idea of “perfection” is ridiculous. All A’s isn’t realistic for a well rounded college student, and doesn’t hold much more value than a 3.5 in a hire-er’s mind. Beside’s that point, if one grade can bring you down like that, then one grade can bring you back up as well. We shouldn’t be fretting over what we did wrong but instead trying to learn from our mistakes to better ourselves for the next time.
We as a generation (and species probably) need to learn to be more accepting of change as well. Say a residence life policy changes or something about your sorority or fraternity by-laws change, our first instinct is always to push back against the idea. Sometimes we don’t bother to think about the positive aspects of this change because we’re so blinded by the sign shining “CHANGE” and “UNKNOWN” at us. Notice this entire article has been using the pronoun "we" because I am just as guilty as anyone else of pushing back and getting way too scared of a new idea, way too quickly. But asking yourself one simple question is enough to help you organize your thoughts and take a few deep breaths.
Is this going to ruin your collegiate career? Anything big or something small. Taking just a few seconds to ask this can truly change your entire college perspective. Your friend bailed on you for lunch, does this mean you are going to drop out and go home to live with your parents? Hopefully not, so there’s no point in doing anything but to forgive and forget. The boy you talked to for two weeks is now hooking up with one of your freshman year friends, are you going to fail classes because of it? Probably not. So there’s no point in gossiping and getting upset.
Most of the unpleasant things we experience in college we won’t remember in a couple years, so why should it affect so deeply in the moment? If it won’t ruin your collegiate career don’t let it ruin a wonderful day either.
