Finals week is always a really tough time for college students. Many work for days straight, using coffee as their only source of fuel. With crazy amounts of work, terrifying cumulative tests, and final projects to get through, students often feel completely overwhelmed.
After all, not only are finals stressful, they also are mentally exhausting. Finals week is also a time of the school year when students deal with serious insecurities about their grades, their choice of major, and potential future jobs.
When finals don't go well for students, they may think they're not cut out for college, and often feel disappointed in themselves. One professor at a university in Toronto, Canada, recognized that students feel immense amounts of pressure about finals, so she did something to help.
No one knows the stress of finals week better than Dr. Jessica Langer, a lecturer in marketing at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario. She told LittleThings, "My students are so brilliant. Every single one of them is brilliant and creative, and they've all got such different strengths and skill sets. In the creative industries in particular, but also the world in general, is changing so quickly and it makes them rightfully anxious."
Seeing her students' stress, she sent them this email:
In the email, Jessica told them that they were important and valuable.
Jessica said, "The thing is, I know from my own experience — I've had a really weird, winding, circuitous route to my own version of success — that the world is so big and expansive and there is so much possibility for them, and there are so many different ways to be successful I wanted to reassure them that they're going to be okay, and that if something doesn't work out for them, they'll have lots more chances to do amazing things. And I wanted to reassure them, also, that literally everyone has setbacks and failures and moments that feel really dark."
Sometimes as a student (and a person in general), it's easy to forget that you're worth believing in, but Jessica wanted to make sure all of her students knew they mattered.
After receiving thanks from her students, Jessica thought she needed to return the favor. "I just wanted them to know that no matter what, I'm in their corner. They will always have someone who cares about them and wants them to do well."
One fourth-year student who shared the email on Twitter wrote: "My marketing prof sent us this email and it made me cry because I really needed this."
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