You really don’t need to stress so much. Now look, I already know I am not, in fact, the first person to say this. I also know I am not the first person forced to face the repercussions of a stress-overload, and I’m especially not the first to go through school slumps. Freshman year, I was go-go-go, do your homework the day you get it and study for hours for an insignificant test kind of student. Now, were my grades good? Yeah, they were. Was I good? Not in the least. My sophomore year was a different story. It took months for the fact that school was in session to settle in. In those months, I found it impossible to sit down for longer than 30 minutes to do my homework and my grades showed it. Dealing with peculiar teachers, my first AP class, and an endless amount of homework, I was oh-so-easily overwhelmed, mastering the art of crying at the drop of a hat. The second semester was a bit easier, I was finishing my homework faster and the tests seemed to lose the emotional toll as I became numb to being in a state of constant stress.
Over the last two years, I have gone through the lesson of stress, and despite being warned of it many times, I still fell victim to its merciless grip. Nothing anyone could and will say to you will make you less stressed, but just try to remember, at the end of the day, it will always get better. If you ever feel like you are drowning in the stress of school, homework, and tests, take a few deep breaths. It might not make your work disappear, but it will calm you down, making everything seem much simpler. Take breaks and eat, talk to your friends (I promise they are in the same situation as you) and hang out with your family, don’t let the stress take over your life. In a short, two weeks’ time, you will forget what the test was about and the homework you were panicking to finish. Looking back on the last two years of school, the smaller moments with friends and classmates have meant so much more—have stuck so much more than a semi-decent grade on a test. But if I could only promise you one thing, it would be this: you will never look back as you walk the stage to your diploma, and think, “If only I had stressed more”.