Academic pressure is something that every student struggles with. Isn’t it frustrating when you don’t reach the standard you set for yourself? When you feel like you did everything you could—your best, your hard work, every last bit of your brain cells—but for some reason, you still fell short. You wanted to scream because why wasn’t all your effort enough to reach that grade, to ace that exam, to nail that presentation, and to be that person who surpasses their expectations and comes up bright and shiny and successful and with an excellent grade? You don’t feel stupid, but you don’t feel smart either. You feel average, and somehow that doesn’t sit well with the standard that you've pinned on your mind like a sticky note that never wears off.
When settling for a passing grade is not an option for you, trying so hard to achieve more but coming up short is like a hard slap that you can’t shake off your face. So you rack your mind for reasons, picking on every single detail that you think swerved you from getting that mark, and when you’re not satisfied with all of the things that you thought of that would justify your shortcomings, you surf the internet for ideas to improve yourself. But when the next pen battle began, you still fell short! So you begin to think maybe you just aren’t one of those people who excel; perhaps this is where you’ll always be, in second or third place—maybe on the tenth or the hundredth, so you make your peace with it. You still try and do your best; you still participate, study, and do everything you can to be better. You began trusting the process and even enjoying it. You began to take on a new hobby—something that will take your mind off of your school work when you feel like breaking down—to relax your mind a bit before battling with your study guides again. And you feel this pressure coming off of your shoulders.
As students, we have this rush—the need to be somewhere far, someplace better than where we are at the moment—almost completely forgetting that the rush is draining our energy. Some of us are always in a hurry. It stresses us out to the point that our restless minds feel like having a mental block, and it frustrates us, making us think, “Why can’t I get my mind to understand what I’m reading? I have exams in a week; I can’t afford to take a break!” Then we beat ourselves up for being stupid when all we need to do is rest. Having enough rest can help you stay focused on the tasks at hand, improve academic performance, and increase productivity. Do you know how everybody always says that “the right person will never run”? It’s the same with grades. We keep chasing good grades that we forget that grades don’t run; it waits, and it waits for us. How likely do you think it is that we will get a good grade if we spend our days worrying, overanalyzing, and working excessively without taking breaks? Maybe, maybe not.
We should realize that we don’t need to rush because life is not a race. Academic pressure is a heavy weight to carry, but stressing out over it can be suffocating.
Sometimes, we just need to take a break. We should close our laptops and just take a walk, ease our minds for a little bit. After that, we can pick up our pens and get ready for another session of studying to get that grade or pass that subject. Grades matter, and so does your health. Make it a habit to find balance amidst pressure.