Next week marks week 7 of the semester, or in other terms: midterms. For some, midterms mean hours of studying for huge midterm exams their teachers decided to give for no reason other than to ruin your day, but for most, midterms only mean one thing: the mid-semester nervous break down has either already hit, is hitting right now, or is fast approaching.

Every year around this time of year, it almost seems as if nothing can go right. For example, my freshman year of college, the week of my 19th birthday, I got in a car accident, my phone got stolen out of my hand while I was walking down the street, and my twin sister tore her ACL for the third time all in the same week, and all on the week of my birthday... like come on.

On top of all of that, it was my very first midterm week ever, and I was still trying to get used to being away from home, I was sick, and I was starting to get homesick. I think at that point a breakdown is expected, and probably encouraged.

I quickly came to notice that the "mid-semester college breakdown" was actually quite a common phenomenon. Around this time of the semester, every semester, you start to see people crying in the hallways, complain to their moms over the phone, and suddenly your roommate starts locking herself in her room for about 22/24 hours of the day, almost like clockwork.

Us college kids have plenty to be stressed about. My breakdown was last week, after I slept through my first class, then I went to my second class at the wrong time, which in turn made me feel like a failure, so I called off work, which made me feel broke, then I ended up in the hospital for a totally unrelated illness.

On top of all of that, I had a cold, I'm studying for the law school entrance exam, and I'm living outside of the dorm for the first time, and let me tell you I had no idea how expensive bill was.

When it feels like the world is against you, the only thing you can do to fix it is relaxing. Take a bath, watch a movie, distance yourself from school work for a couple of hours, and if you need to skip a class, skip a class. Around this time of the semester you might feel like you're falling way behind in all of your classes, but at the end of the day, one bad grade is only ONE bad grade.

That one bad grade is not going to define your college career.

And if taking a break results in a bad grade, but it saved you from a breakdown, I would have to say you're probably the winner here.

Now that I am a seasoned college senior, I know exactly how to handle myself when I feel my mid-semester breakdown coming on. I lock myself in my room, watch “Friends” on my laptop, and eat an entire pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream without breathing. All while crying it out.

Sometimes you just have to cry it out, ya know what I'm saying?