I’m a very proud person. I have always, even as a little girl, carried myself with an air of knowing. When my brother learned how to ride a bicycle at the age of seven, I just had to learn at the age of four, and then proceed to brag about it for at least two years to all of my walking neighborhood friends. The third day I was at college, I chose to wait outside of my dorm that I had locked myself out of and wait for my roommate to get back and let me in instead of calling Campus Public Safety (who could do the job in under five minutes).

Admitting defeat has never been an easy task for me.

Asking for help, or accepting that I can’t do something for myself, goes against my very nature. That little girl who learned how to ride a bike without training wheels at the age of four always put a mass amount of pressure on herself to always be perfect. Everything I have ever done over the past 18 years has been done with my maximum amount of effort; from every test to every activity to every milestone in my life. When I was graduating high school last year, people would often come up to me and ask me how I had become the salutatorian, how I had gotten to this place. I would always tell them the same thing: I tried my hardest.

The benefit of this mentality is that I have garnered the ability to push myself, and the motivation necessary to get through life. I have turned myself into a highly productive, highly driven individual.

The downside? I have the inability to recognize the fact that I need outside help in my times of need.

This week was one of the most difficult weeks I have experienced in a long time. I finally experienced the famous week I have been hearing other students mutter about: "hell week." It seemed like a college legend to me — how could one person have a week every semester that would drive them to the near point of insanity due to the amount of work they had to get done?

Of course, when I had two presentations, three essays, a creative writing piece, reading for two classes, a huge chapter test and a play I was in opening the same week, I finally had my answer to that question.

By Wednesday I was broken. After staying up until 3 a.m. two nights in a row and rushing through two of my three papers in a slapdash attempt to at least throw something intelligible down on a piece of paper, I was drained. Every second of the day was just filled with this weight—a presence clutching onto my shoulders like a vice grip, attempting to burrow me deep into the ground beneath my feet. My rib cage seemed as thin as paper, crumpling in on itself every time a new pressure was added onto my week. By four o’clock that day, I finally just had to sit on my bed, call my mom and cry.

It was, of course, at this point, my friends noticed that I needed help.

My friend Erika gave me pep talks and helped me attempt to get a handle on my life, my friend Colin sent me messages asking if there was anything he could do for me, and my friend Margot just took me to Muddy Waters and let me talk about everything good and everything bad. Though it was when my boyfriend offered to make me flashcards for our upcoming test so that I could study while I was at play practice, my pride kicked in. I wasn’t used to all of this outside help, of these people willing to put aside what they were doing to just do things for me. Two thoughts ran through my brain: there’s no way I could ask these people to be so kind to me, and there’s no way I could admit that I needed their help.

Then, of course, I realized how ridiculous I was being.

After I had refused to let my boyfriend take time out of his day to make me notecards, he came up to my room to attempt to de-stress me. I have to admit that, sometimes, he is far more logical than I am (and far less scattered about everything). More often than not, he seems to give me advice that I know I should have thought of myself, but for some reason, I just needed him to remind me of these basic concepts. “Grace,” he said. “It’s okay to ask for help. You can’t do everything on your own.”

I knew he was right. How could I make it through such a hell week without a helping hand here and there? If I tried to do everything, if I tried to invent time out of thin air to get everything done, I would have broken.

When I got back from play practice that day, he had made me 22 notecards, complete with definitions, examples and drawings (my favorite one was of a horse he named Burrow — it had a neck comparable to that of a giraffe, but it was beautiful in its quirkiness all the same). If he hadn’t made me those notecards, I wouldn’t have survived the test I took on Friday.

We are only human; we are not invincible, immortal. No matter how much we would like to believe that we have life by the horns, we can’t be the only ones holding on. I’m often too proud for my own good, and people notice that I am horrible at asking for help, but when I let my friends help me, my life became that much easier. I put aside my pride, and because I admitted that I was only human, I was able to get to sleep early, I was able to study, and I was able to unwind because I knew I wasn’t alone. I had a team behind me, a team of people who were willing to help me at a moment’s notice-- I just had to let them in.