First, unclench your jaw. Take a deep breath in through your nose, count to four, hold it for a second, and breath out through your mouth. Do that at least three more times, or as many times as you need to relax. Unclench your jaw, I bet it’s still clenched. Now that you’re relaxed, do some gentle neck rolls and keep breathing. 

I did a quick Google search last night to see just how sleep-deprived I am, and it turns out that six hours of sleep a night is not enough sleep. According to Elite Daily, you should get at least seven hours of sleep a night. Doing some quick math, I am not getting enough sleep, and I’d wager a guess that naps don’t supplement the REM sleep that you should be getting at night.

Now, I don’t want you all to get more stressed over the fact that your schedule and course load do not allow you to get the sleep you need. In my mind, if a class’ workload is causing severe sleep deprivation, then that is reason enough to contact the professor and say that their class is too much– especially during times of intense stress such as now. 

That being said, the reality is that the grades you get now only matter if you’re a huge nerd that wants to go to grad school. Even then, having one bad semester in a year where it’s remarkable that you’re showing up to class at all should not affect how you are perceived by schools. If they are like that, then is that school really where you want to be anyway? Obviously, I’m a naive first-year, but that logic makes sense to me.

I just want everyone to follow the advice I don’t follow myself, which is to chill out, take a breath, and not worry so much about how present things will affect future things. Trust that everything will work out as it will work out, and accept that things may not be what you want them to be. You can’t plan for the future; as frustrating as it is to someone like myself, that is the reality of life. You should, however, and I really insist you do, hope for the future and try to manifest good things by being kind to others, and more importantly, to yourself.

One more time– deep breath in through your nose for four, hold it for a second, and breath out through your mouth. Unclench your jaw, you got this. I’m proud of you already.