It’s fair to say that most people run into problems in their daily lives. It’s hard to have a day where absolutely nothing goes wrong, and these occurrences can range from something as simple as doing the wrong math homework to something much bigger, like your car breaking down or losing your credit card. These problems can seemingly pop up out of nowhere, and can often throw a wrench in your plans for the day. No matter what goes wrong, in the heat of the moment it can easily feel like everything’s falling apart… but it’s really not that big of a deal, and in the grand scheme of things these little problems barely affect you at all.

Personally, I’ve done things like forgetting or doing the wrong homework, forgetting the due date of an assignment, and even studying the wrong material for a quiz or test. I’ve had some major flubs pertaining to school, and many more outside of it. I still have vivid memories of playing games with my sisters a bit too aggressively, and the sinking feeling of my mistake (before bribing them to not tell Mom that our “harmless” wrestling wasn’t harmless) is a memory that will stick in my head for probably as long as I live. I’ve ran into countless problems caused by my own error, and although they’ve seemed like the end of me at the time, they really haven’t negatively affected me very much. Not one of these problems that I stressed out about at the time has really affected me, and they weren’t such a big deal. I’ve had bad days where seemingly everything goes wrong and it feels like everyone and everything’s out to get me, and these usually consist of many little problems that don’t even matter very much. These little things barely affect you at all, and they aren’t worth stressing out over.

Recently, I was on a trip with the rest of The Central Trend and FHC’s Yearbook, and we went to  MIPA, the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association. In a nutshell, we went to different sessions and learned about cool journalism stuff! However, my second session ended around 2-3 minutes later than everyone else’s. I should’ve been looking at the time, but I assumed I wasn’t the only one getting out a little bit late.  After going outside and looking around for a minute, it dawned on me that the bus had left without me. Shortly after frantically texting TCT members and being completely clueless as to where the bus was, I was rescued by the group. It all worked out in the end, but my first thoughts were that I was going to be stranded in Lansing. Though this problem seemed like a huge deal at first, it really just ended up as something to laugh about.

There’s no use in freaking out about these little problems, and no matter how bad they seem while they’re happening, they’re probably not as bad as they seem. Your small everyday problems aren’t going to affect you much at all, and it’ll get worked out. I’m more than guilty of overreacting and thinking that these small problems are going to destroy any and all plans that I have, or that my whole day or week would be ruined. However, this has never happened to me and I can’t ever see it happening.

Small problems and troubles are a part of everyday life for most people, and they’re going to happen pretty much no matter what. Although there’s nearly no avoiding it, when life decides to throw a curveball at you, just get past it and don’t worry about “how bad everything’s going to be,” because you’re going to be just fine, and it’s surely not the end of the world or anything like that.