(Opinion essay)

Woah, easy there. Don’t worry. I’m not ordering you to drop out of your school or uni and forget about studying EVER again. I’m simply here to introduce my own experience of not minding academic achievement and how it influences my life — cause it could influence yours, too.

Imagine a concept: you don’t have to worry about your studying ever again. You never stress about sending assignments on time. About answering at a lesson when you’re too anxious to speak in public. About having to learn a subject you have zero interest in. All of it seems like some sort of paradise or utopia. But you could live it. You just have to stop caring about what grades you’ll receive.

What you should do instead is focus on how you study. Try to understand what you’re learning and how it is useful for you. Search for new methods of doing things. Start your own routines. Give yourself breaks. Try to make studying an activity you like — not a bargain to get a satisfactory mark, and then be left alone, feeling brain-dead. Don’t be jealous of others. Allow failures, but don’t perceive them like ones — consider them as lessons, too. As long as you make the studying process comfortable, you’ll be able to achieve so much more than when you’re constantly stressed and depressed because of some numbers. Remember: “studying” does not stand for “student dying”!

If you’re wondering if my opinion is valid, lemme share how my life changed. I’ve become a less mentally bothered person. I’ve set a rule to never lose sleep because of my studies: neither consciously nor unconsciously. I work rightfully, I don’t ever cheat on tests or try to get extra points for nothing. I don’t measure my knowledge by what’s written in my report card, because this journey has helped me learn my worth. I was still the fourth person in the semester Institute rating. I didn’t break a sweat doing it, also didn’t really feel motivated OR disappointed.

I’m a person of the process, not result. I enjoy making a thing, doing an activity much more than finishing it. My award is the experience I gain. Not someone saying I “passed.” And by investing my time and power into the process, unlike people who do something just to attain a mark, i bring out a lot more at the end. It doesn’t always work out on the academic achievement part, but when have ever grades truly showed the real intellect of a person? Winston Churchill was a slacker in maths, Steve Jobs never even finished college, and I know and can do more than people who have higher grades than me.

So that’s why I advise you to stop worrying that much and let it go. It will come to you naturally. You’ll be fine even if you don’t have a gold medal and a red diploma.