No, you're not perfect. Mankind is inherently flawed, according to every major religion and philosophy in the world. Every person, and I mean every person, has done something wrong, made a crazy mistake, failed a test, or something to that effect, once in their lives. Everyone has broken a relationship, lost friends, hurt someone's feelings, spoken too soon, lost their heirloom necklace, broke their cell phone, whatever you can think of, once in their lives. We all scraped our knees when we were six and scraped our brains (figuratively......I hope) when we were sixteen. Whatever you can think of, at least one of us has done it.
Am I excusing poor behavior or laziness? Absolutely not. However, too many of us at my university, including yours truly, are way too hard on ourselves. We don't do well in one class and we think it means we're dumb. We get an A- and something's wrong, right? In addition, we often attempt the balancing act of school, work, internship, friendships, relationships, school clubs. Yes, we're all insane and no, we don't sleep. Or eat healthy. Seriously, where's the time? We're too busy trying to be perfect at everything. You know, because it's AU. If we don't get an A in every class, have an awesome internship with a member of Congress, enjoy a social life and a love life, and hold down a job (to pay rent and consume massive amounts of alcohol needed to cope with the chaos), we're starving people in poor countries. Or something like that. On a less snarky note, we feel like failures.
You know, it's really sad that we feel like we need to maintain this level of craziness. It's an obsession and obsessions are never healthy. I cannot tell you how many of my peers do not get a good night's sleep, never relax (except to numb their minds with Facebook, Twitter, etc) and only go out to get bombed (can you blame them?). We're so obsessed with that perfect record, that perfect resume, the perfect connections, and the perfect college experience (complete with aforementioned social life and love life), that we forget who we are. Even more ironic, we came here to fix problems in the world and instead obsess over problems with ourselves.
To put it succinctly, just chill. Do what you can, give your best, and prioritize. We are made for multitasking (specialization is for cells, peeps) but no one person can do it all. If you fail, acknowledge it, atone for it, and move on. Ask for help when you need it. Accept defeat as it comes. Don't forget the people who love you. Yes, I promise, at least one person in the world loves you, so don't give me any crap about it. And don't eat worms, either. They're gross.
And, if I have to hear you complain because you got an A- and you think your professor hates you, I'm gonna give you something else to complain about. They're worse things in the world like climate change, world hunger and Justin Bieber. So please, cool it and think for a second.
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