Looking back on my whole time at Loyola, I have one very important piece of advice for all of my young friends: take 15 or more credits every semester, because your second semester senior year self will thank you for it.

This semester was the hardest semester of my college career. I took 20 hours of classes, I worked over 20 hours a week, and I was editor-in-chief of The Maroon, which is like a full time job. Every day I would ask myself, “Self, what are you doing? How are you going to make it through this semester?” And every day I would tell myself, “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m going to make it through this semester.”

Now that I have “made it,” I’m going to tell you how I did it with a couple of tips that helped me.

Number one: focus on the light at the end of the tunnel. For me, my light was graduation. I knew that no matter what, I had to graduate. In order to graduate, I had to pass all my classes, and in order to pass all of my classes, I had to do the work. Don’t forget about what you’re striving for.

Number two: make time to do something you enjoy. This may sound really cheesy, but I really enjoyed being editor-in-chief of The Maroon. I’ve been at The Maroon since my first week of college. I can’t imagine my college experience without it. Every day I was happy to come to The Maroon office to work on every week’s issue, and every Friday it was rewarding to see all of our hard work on the stands. No matter how anybody else on campus feels about The Maroon, I still love it, and it kept me happy. Most people can’t dedicate hours a week to doing something they enjoy, but even a little time helps. You have to take a break from stress every once in a while.

And number three: keep positive energy around you. My positive energy came from my inspirations in life. One of my biggest inspirations is the beautiful and amazing Oprah Winfrey, so I made her my wallpaper on my computer. Writing that down makes it sound so weird, but seeing Oprah’s smiling face every day made me think, “hey, you can do this. Oprah is here cheering for you.” (I don’t know if I made that more or less weird.) I also kept a few self help books by some of my other inspirations on my desk, and by “a few” I mean like four. There’s no such thing as too much self help. I didn’t even always have time to read them, but I always thought, “If they can do it, so can I.”

No matter what you’re going through, anything that keeps you motivated helps. These are just some things that helped me. I guess my real piece of advice for everyone is to find out what keeps you motivated.

Now that I’m done with college, I can’t wait to head into the “real world” and face some more challenges, because the best thing about challenges is overcoming them.