As the first week of school rolls around, anxiety and panic arise. As I sit here writing this, I cannot help but think about the plethora of syllabi, assignments, and readings due for this semester, and I know that I am not the only one going through this self-destruction. But here’s the thing, take a breath. As cliche and basic as this may sound, here me out; life is too short. Read that again. But like I mean read that again, life is too short. These past 3 years have been unimaginable. Now when I say this I do not mean that bad and horrific things don’t happen, I mean we study world history for a reason, right? But it is crazy to think that our lives will be read in the history books a few generations from now. With all that being said, it is all okay. Whichever test you are studying for, that school you are trying to get into, or that job you are interviewing for, take a breath. It is not going anywhere. I know Gen Z gets a lot of hate for being too much or not enough, but I believe that we as a generation need to relax. We overcompensate, we overwork ourselves, and we do not allow ourselves to sit back and just enjoy the moment. The world today is not the same as the world that our parents grew up in. I believe the lack of acknowledgment of this will only lead to a higher count of burnout for our generation. Freshmen who started college in 2019 went through their first two years of college in a global pandemic, and if that isn’t stressful enough, they were expected to learn how to dissect a frog virtually or memorize supreme court cases with our families downstairs blasting the news so all you hear in the background is the national and international death count of that day. At the end of the day, I believe we need to sit back and relax. We need to take breaths and just think about all we have been through and just remember that life is too short.