I am currently on my yearly family vacation in central Oregon. My entire extended family rents out a couple houses in a town called Sunriver. We spend the week playing tennis, golfing and kayaking. Earlier this week, on our way back from tennis, my brother said something that got me thinking.

“You know what I love about vacation? The only thing I have to worry about right now is why my backhand is so shitty.”

So much truth packed into two sentences. For me, there might be a little too much truth to his statement. There’s so much relaxation and peacefulness on vacations. We are able to shrug off trivial problems with ease, but one of the flaws that I have is, that I kind of treat everything like how my brother treats his backhand. I take issues that seem small in the scheme of life, and I just toss them aside.

Say I have a psych test tomorrow. I think to myself, “Is the score I get on this test going to matter in three years?” which leads to me spending far too little time studying, and far too much time doing anything else.

Although it probably isn’t good for my GPA, I think this is the primary reason why I am a really happy person. Aside from my immediate family, and an admittedly innocent umpire, I have never yelled at anyone. I never get stressed out about anything. Most of the time, I wear a genuine smile.

Obviously, I need to spend more time studying and take some things more seriously. However, I think that it would benefit a lot of college students to take this kind of approach with life. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be active on campus or that they need to study less. I’m saying that when people are stressed out and angry, they should ask themselves, “Is this worthy of causing me stress?” With the issues we come across as 18-22 year olds, the answer should almost certainly be no. It will allow you to operate with a much clearer head and a lot less weight on your shoulders. This will hopefully allow you to be more efficient because you aren’t constantly worrying about something that doesn’t deserve your focus.

Like I said, I live my life by this motto. It leads to me being a really happy person, with an aggressively average GPA.

If you are reading this, and you agree with me, do yourself a favor, and start working on being happier. While you’re doing that, I’ll be working on the GPA.