My biggest extracurricular is overthinking my own timeline.
I have this constant, nagging voice in the back of my head telling me that I’m behind in life. The cruel part is that I’ve no way of identifying how I’m behind. I just know I am. I can’t even tell you what I need to achieve to get ahead, but I can tell you that everyone seems to have figured it out but me.
University’s a funny place to exist because people are always doing impressive things at all times, and everyone knows what’s next for them. Someone in my lab got into medical school. Another person from my class posted about their groundbreaking research that I don’t really understand. And of course, someone I work with just landed a six-figure engineering job directly after graduation. Meanwhile, I’m celebrating that I remembered to take my Cipralex this morning.
No matter what I accomplish, it never feels like enough. I’ll finish a brutal semester, get a good grade on a paper that took years off my life, or land a research position I was really hoping for, and my brain goes, “cool, now do more.” Do more extracurriculars. Become more involved in the community. Start a side hustle with all the free time I don’t have. There’s never any celebration for achieving my goals, just an expectation to immediately raise the bar higher.
Failure, on the other hand, gets a one-way ticket to determining my worth. One bad grade, one rejection, one thing not going according to plan, and suddenly “incompetent” is my only personality trait. I’ll hyper fixate on a single disappointment and forget about every other thing I’ve ever done right. I’ll convince myself this one moment is proof that I’m behind for real this time.
It’s exhausting to live a life where I barely recognize my own successes, while setbacks feel like they dictate my entire future. I’m stuck in a never-ending cycle of proving my worth, not to my peers, but to myself. It feels like I’m auditioning for my own life, while everyone automatically got the lead role in their own.
But the more I talk to people, the more I understand that no one actually knows what they’re doing either.
The ones who seem ahead are also comparing themselves to others. The people who look the most put-together are also stressed about whether they are doing enough. I’ve learned that the goals I’ve been running towards are mostly a result of my own impossible expectations.
I’ve realized that my internal voice isn’t a reliable narrator. Surviving a hard semester still counts as a success, getting a research position is something worth celebrating, and doing my best in a world that constantly demands more is enough. I’m allowed to be proud of myself without immediately thinking about the next thing I need to do.
I think we all need to shift our perspective from being behind to being in progress, even when we don’t feel impressive or accomplished. We need to start talking to ourselves the way we talk to our friends, with more patience and less judgement.
At the end of the day, showing up for yourself and trying your best doesn’t mean you’re falling behind at all.
In fact, it’s exactly what moving ahead looks like.
Tags
Academic pressure, Falling behind, GPA, Hot mess
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