It's five o'clock in the morning. Your final essay that's worth twenty percent of your grade is due in two hours, you haven't even started your research, and the five-hour energy you drank an hour ago is doing nothing for your ongoing sleep deprivation.
To top it all off, your biggest fear at the moment is how much one grade might impact your entire future. We've all experienced something similar to this at least once in our lifetimes.
I'll admit, some of my best work has been done under the weight of a lot of anxiety after days of ignoring the subject. As a writer, there are plenty of times when I have to rely on the burst of inspiration that comes at the last second. Recently, I've seen a lot of my friends operate similarly with their studies.
So I have to wonder, why on Earth are we all so under-motivated? I'm sure some would call it laziness, and it is to a certain extent. However, it's no secret students of all ages across the United States have had complaints about our education system for a while now. One of the bigger problems here is the amount of pressure there is associated with schooling.
We're taught from the very beginning to never fail, to never make mistakes. From the moment we took our first ever exam, we were told mistakes had consequences, and believe me they do, but our misstep is the weight of those repercussions. All this does is create the anxiety holding us back in the first place.
What we aren't told is that one failing grade isn't the end. Believe it or not, flunking yourself out of college doesn't have to be anywhere close to the end. It's all about how you start over. We have as many infinite numbers of beginnings to choose from. Not every question we ask ourselves will have a one-size-fits-all sort of answer.