Trust me, I know.

Waking up to a day that feels like the other eleven thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight days you've lived gets pretty frustrating.

This frustration, coupled with implicit societal pressure or your own stress-inducing thoughts to get through the day pursuing your goals, makes a simple task like getting out of bed very arduous.

What makes a task that was once so effortless become burdensome deserves your undivided attention. But not only for five minutes, when you're rolling around in bed counting the seconds before your annoying alarm blares. The cause of this feeling deserves time sufficient to mitigate the emotions that consume you when you least expect it to, like the split second after your last conference call ends, or at the very least time sufficient to remind yourself that you care about yourself first and foremost.

The nature of online classes reinforces our responsibility to work hard to get our desired grades. Productivity can gradually become a drug that compels you to replace self-care with work. If you're like me and love being productive, doing all of your classwork, homework, and exams at home can become overwhelming if you're not intentionally setting time aside to tend to your mental health.

One way I've learned to preserve the homey feeling of my home, and by extension, my mental health is through incorporating activities into my daily routine wherein I can act as more than just a student, such as playing my instrument, working out, or even writing purely for fun.

Say it with me, "Yes, my GPA is important but so is my mental health."