Prioritizing Peace

By Brooke Elwell

by Rhiannon Li

College has a way of swallowing you whole. One minute, you’re managing everything just fine, and in the next, life feels like a series of deadlines, expectations and emotional oscillation. You wake up already tired, race through the day fueled by caffeine and obligation and still fall asleep feeling behind.

Peace becomes something abstract, reserved for people who aren’t balancing exams, relationships and the quiet pressure to have it all together. You start existing in survival mode: reacting instead of living, trying to hold yourself together while everything around you demands more.

Productivity gets confused with stability, overcommitment with ambition. The small irritations, the people who let you down, and the moments that don’t go your way hit you harder because you’re already running on empty.

People will test your patience. Some will switch up without warning. They’ll stop texting back, start acting differently, withdraw the energy they once gave freely. You’ll wonder what changed, and sometimes the answer is just them. Other times, it’s that you finally noticed how much effort you were putting in to keep the peace with people who don’t do the same.

Then there’s the academic nightmare: you study until your eyes blur, turn in every assignment, and still, the results fall short of the effort. You start to measure your worth in percentages and GPAs, forgetting that being “enough” was never supposed to be a grade.

Outside of class, the pressure doesn’t stop. Work, clubs, leadership roles and a thousand little side commitments seem to multiply overnight. It’s easy to mistake productivity for purpose. You show up everywhere but start to feel absent in your own life. You tell yourself it’s just the mid-semester slump, but deep down you know you’re giving more than you have to lose.

That’s when I had to stop and ask: Are my actions aligning with my values? Because peace doesn’t live where there’s constant chaos. It lives where your energy, time and heart match what actually matters to you.

When I realized they didn’t, I started making different choices: smaller, quieter ones. Choosing not to chase people who made me question my worth. Choosing to believe that trying my hardest in a hard major is enough. Choosing to forgive myself for not being everywhere, doing everything and pleasing everyone all at once.

I let go of the need to control how others treated me or how quickly things “should” fall into place. Instead, I decided to control my response — the one thing that’s actually mine.

That’s what prioritizing peace looks like. It’s not the soft, Pinterest version with candles and journaling (though those help). It’s the active decision to step back when something or someone starts eroding your sense of self. It’s realizing that not every battle deserves your energy and not every loss is a failure. Sometimes peace means walking away. Other times, it means staying, but with a different mindset.

You can’t control the people who disappoint you, the grades that sting or the chaos that sneaks into your days. But you can control what you give attention to. You can control the story you tell yourself: the one that says you’re still enough, even through the turmoil.

As the semester winds down and the noise climbs to its peak, here’s what I’m holding onto:

1. Peace isn’t passive. It’s power. 

2. Refuse to let the world pull you out of character. 

3. Remember who you are. The version of you who’s grounded, calm and sure of what matters is the real you. Everything else is just a distraction.

Prioritize peace like your life depends on it, because sometimes, it does.