Last week, a good friend of mine cried into my chest for 20 minutes outside DuSable Hall.

She is one of the hardest working, strongest and most self-sufficient women I’ve ever met. Truthfully, I didn’t think she could cry. She pays her rent, tuition and bills by working three jobs. I’ve seen her kick grown men out of a party for being drunk and stupid with nothing more than a stern look. She is 22 years old and has accomplished more than many people twice her age.

And that day she could barely speak between half choked sobs. “I’m drowning, Dan. I can’t do this anymore.”

I’ve never felt so useless in my life. I couldn’t help her.

The straw which broke her will was a simple midterm exam. That and a professor who told her to drop the class before it affected her GPA while refusing to make an exception for one student.

As I begin my midterms today, I find myself in a similar situation. I’m drowning, too.

As you can tell by my picture, I have a shaved head. This isn’t because I’m going bald or because I like the style. At the tender age of 22, the majority of my hair is grey from stress and I’m too proud to dye it. I eat one meal a day because A) that’s all I can afford and B) that’s all I have time for. This semester I’m taking 19 credit hours and what little time I have to myself is devoted to job applications, writing columns and reading textbooks.

I have a saying: “Nothing will kill me unless I say it can.” To me, it means that I’m never going to stop fighting for what I want. Death’s going to have to wait, in the mean time I’ve got a life to live.

To expand the idea a little further, let’s look at life as happening every moment of every day. It’s not just the good stuff like Thursday nights at Stanley’s, Super-Smash Bros and time spent with loved ones. It’s the bad stuff, too. Stuff like failing exams, heart-attack inducing stress levels and working three jobs to stay on your feet.

What I’m saying is this: you have little to no control over what happens to you in this life. What you do have control over is how you react to it. So meet success and failure in the middle, accept them both with a smile and keep going. If you can do that, you’ll never lose.

That’s life. It’s not all good, but then again it is.