The Next Month Will Suck But Here’s Why You’ll Be Okay

At this point of the year, you’ve said goodbye to your teachers, your classrooms and the structured life you’ve led for 13 years.

But now, you have some of the most intense, wild and stressful weeks of your relatively short life thus far.

We’re not going to sugar coat it–they’re probably going to suck. But that’s okay.

You essentially have weeks of “study” (in very strong inverted commas) and exams.

Before I get into how, despite your best efforts, it’s going to suck at least a bit, you need to know that you will make out it out alive and free.

No matter what type of student or studier you are, you’re going to get inside your own head and test your limits in some way or another.

If you’re a seasoned, successful studier, you’re going to be staying up at unheard of hours of the night, absolutely wrecking yourself, just so you can remember to put ‘thus’ in the correct spot for your Hamlet essay.

If you’re an unsuccessful studier you’re either going to try and make up for all that time you binged Brooklyn Nine-Nine instead of figuring out where you should put ‘thus’ in your Hamlet essay, or you’re not going to be doing anything and regretting the year you think you wasted.

All these feelings are normal and again, all these feelings are okay.

I wish I could say that exams fly by and before you know it, it’s all over and you can begin your new life of no responsibilities and goon.

But, my final exams reaaaaaaallly dragged on. My last exam was on the last day (love you Drama, never change) and each day waiting for the dreaded test felt longer than the last.

You’ll think a ten day gap between exams will serve you well but most of that time you’ll be sitting at your desk trying to memorise notes, before thinking you can memorise notes better by doing the same thing, but in the shower.

School is so much more than that number you get at the end and regardless if you loved or hated the experience, you can’t deny that it’s really formative in the developing of a person’s character.

A really valuable mantra to remember if you get caught up in this type of thinking and stress is, screwing up your final exams does not equal screwing up school completely.

Yeah, it might feel like your entire future is riding on how well you go in this set of exams but the reality is the exact opposite.

You’re more than a mark from a bunch of standardised tests that can only measure how well you can memorise an essay.

A cheesy cliché sure, but completely true–you’re more than your number.