What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger

It is about that time of year again. You know what I am talking about.

Midterms.

It is that joyful time of year where our minds are filled with all the many group projects, tests, and papers we have to do, study for, and write. It is also about the time we start to anticipate that big end of term paper.

Hyperbolic thoughts like, “I’m going to die. This paper is going to kill me, and if this one doesn’t, one of the three others I have to write will!” inevitably passes [inevitably pass] through our minds.

Fall is here. It is time for football and bonfires, camping and s’mores, Halloween, and hot apple cider - that is, for everyone who doesn’t have multiple research papers or that one huge paper to write.

So how do we get past the “This is going to be the end of me” thoughts and attack this paper?

It is a mountain that just seems too high to climb. It is the Mt. Everest of papers, and we do not feel like one of those people who can withstand the frigid air (the requirements of the assignment), the turbulent weather (life still going on around us) or low oxygen levels (writer’s block?) in order to get to the top (to finish the paper).

Take comfort in the fact that while Everest may have taken some lives, as far as I know, no one has ever died from writing too many papers or too much for one paper. (So for those of you looking to take a page out of the Wedding Crasher’s guidebook: you cannot use the line, “We lost a lot of good men out there” for this.)

However, you can think of it in terms of the old adage and new Kelly Clarkson song: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

So stand a little taller knowing this mountainous paper will shortly turn into a mole hill or a grain of sand.

You can do it. You can, and you will. Perhaps you can even take the approach, as I’ve mentioned before, of breaking the writing up into sections to do one at a time.

You will get it done. Just remember – what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.