It's a hard statement to make sometimes, if I'm being honest.

So many people try to get really good grades just because they worry about what people will think if they don't do well in their studies. I myself am known for holding myself to ridiculous expectations just because I want to do well. Now, this isn't always a bad thing, I don't see anything wrong with striving for good things and for wanting to do well in school, but so often I see this need to do well taking over everything else.

I constantly find myself pushing back or neglecting my time with God because I have "too much work to do" I see that I have a lot of assignments due or some tests and I allow those things to stress me out. Rather than going to a worship night, or spending some much needed time resting or in the word I find myself doing homework or stressing over my classes.

I feel like in a lot of college students today we feel this ridiculous pressure to do well and to strive for excellence in our studies. Everyone is held to these high competitive expectations and we start to believe that our GPA is more important than anything else, we start to see these grades and associate this to who we are as a person, because obviously if we get a poor mark then we're a horrible person and we're letting people down, right? But if we skip that worship night or our sabbath to cram in a little bit more study time we will get a good grade and then people will be proud.

It's a mess, but this is honestly how so many people feel! I don't know how we got here but I so want to see these thoughts and expectations go away. We are much more than our GPA and our relationship with God is the most important thing. If we don't have that then we don't have anything. Our GPA isn't going to get us into heaven.

I think the best way to help get rid of this is to better prioritize our time so that we do have time to spend with God. I'm not saying that our studies are not important and we should slack off, but rather I'm saying that we need to remember that we can't be perfect and sometimes our best isn't going to be an A, sometimes it will be a C. We can't all be good at everything. We need to stop feeling guilty about spending time intentionally with God and stop feeling restless about the homework we could be doing.

"Your worth isn't found in a GPA." Remember that. Tell that to yourself.