It is 10 p.m. and I realize that I just missed the deadline for my APUSH assignment. I bang my hands on my table and frantically try to organize my jumbled thoughts into a plan of action. I tell myself to just do it. Just get through this crisis, through the week. A sense of failure flows through my hands as they begin to shake. The stress I have been feeling from swimming, junior year, friends, family and myself suddenly combines into one big ball that threatens to run me over if I do not change my path.

In that moment, the stress and the careless person I thought I had become were too much to handle. I decided that I wanted to drop APUSH, and I almost did. But then I asked myself a simple question: Why am I taking the class?

After that stressful night, I consulted my friends, my family and my counselor about potentially dropping the class. Everybody I talked to was supportive and they all wanted my best interest. They asked me why I would continue to take a class that was obviously putting a lot of stress on me and compromising my mental health. The answer is the reason why I am still in the class.

Why am I taking the classes I am taking?

I found that the question is more important than the answer. I add to my answer everyday, but I think I am slowly developing my own response. I realized that I am taking APUSH because the class and material are engaging. I want to challenge myself and to learn. Everything else should be secondary. And yes, that includes grades.

It took a freakout for me to truly decide that I was going to embrace the challenge of hard classes. This challenge is going to be uncomfortable, and it is going to make me feel anxious at times, but I realized that if I tackle the obstacle with the right mindset, I can  overcome the pressure. The challenge is what should be exciting, not the moment when Infinite Campus finally refreshes.

Don’t get me wrong, I still want to do my best, which might lead me to worry about how I did on a test or graded class discussion, but now I have the tools and the questions to check myself.

This is what I challenge all of you to do: think about your motivations behind the classes, the clubs, the sports and the other activities in which you participate.

If you find that you are doing things just for the end results, you may want to take a step back and decide whether that activity is actually beneficial.We should be doing things because we see their value and their benefit, and while impressing colleges or earning a good grade are viable motivations, they should not be the only things that drive us.

This reevaluation is not just to make sure we are chasing a challenge. It should also help check us and make sure we are not going beyond our limits. There is a fine line between chasing the challenge for the sake of learning and pushing oneself off a cliff because of a desire for perfection. Mental health is not something that should be tossed aside for a pursuit of a challenge. When I had my breakdown, it was a sign for me to check if I was overworked. Even though I decided to stick with my challenging schedule, I know that if I do come to a point where I become too stressed, I need to stop and take a rest.

So going forward, I am going to try to not live Nike’s slogan of “Just do it.” Instead, I am going to embrace the challenges I will face because I want to, replacing the ubiquitous slogan with “I want to do it.”