Last week, I had a mid-term. This was in a class that many of my classmates think to be a challenging one. Throughout the day, I saw many of them freaking out, struggling to cram as much information as they could into their heads. The demeanor of fear and uncertainty that I saw on their faces made me unsure of my own grasp of the material and I began to grow nervous.

Even as I’m writing this, I’m saturated in anxiety, waiting to see how I did.

This situation isn’t unusual for college students. I’m sure every one of us has faced this at least once. However, in the grand scheme of things, the consequences are never as dire as the moment leads us to believe. In all honesty, I don’t think that my score on that test will matter to me a year, or even a semester, from now.

We all fear something, whether it be a looming exam, the future or even the person you’ve had a crush on discovering your hidden feelings. What we don’t realize about this is that things only matter in the present. Eventually, time will solve all these problems in one way or another and, when it does, they won’t matter.

Exams come and go, the future is never as frightening as we think and if you never work up the courage to talk to your crush, you’ll eventually find someone else.

In the present though, these fears hold us back from realizing what we truly want and what we are capable of. Once we realize that the worse consequences of these temporary fears are all in our heads, we can dispel them and get on with our lives.

Halloween is supposed to be the time of year where we embrace fear, but I say it’s the time to overcome it. Its a time that shouldn’t be spent worrying about exams you know are going to happen anyways, it should be spent over-indulging on candy and watching bad slasher flicks with your friends.

I’m not going to say that purging fear from the mind is an easy thing to do. Often, I still find I fail after spending my entire time here at NKU trying to master that skill, but the feeling you get when the weight lifts off your chest is well worth it. The key to all of this is to realize that much of what you fear can’t actually harm you.