I didn’t care about school until I decided at age 7 that I wanted to be a doctor.
Once that happened, I worked hard to get straight A’s and forced myself to get really good at STEM. If I had to practice math and science over and over to get good grades, that was how it went.
However, in high school, I became much more short-sighted. I was freaked out about going to a good college, and lost sight of wanting to be a doctor. I was just focused on earning straight A’s so I could get into a top university.
Along the way, I had two friends “Daniela” and “Noelle” who took the same courseload I did - Honors Precalculus, Honors English, Honors Spanish, AP Chemistry and AP World History. They kicked butt and seemed happy and stress-free.
Now, English is normally one of my strongest subjects, but there was this one paper in Honors English I got a B on because I had made a number of grammatical errors. I was like, “How the ■■■■ did I get a ‘B’ if my teacher wrote ‘great’ near every single paragraph?”
Noelle, who is and was a stronger writer than I am, said, “OP, Mrs. Smith writes ‘great’ on every essay.”
Uh, she never did for my previous essays.
I just became massively depressed. I felt like Noelle and Daniela were just “built different” and were excelling academically more so than I was. I mean, I was earning A’s, but was really stressed in all of those classes.
And my brain chemistry was ruined forever as a result of that year. I was a loser in high school otherwise too. Ugly to average looking with acne and braces, no makeup skills, no social skills, no charisma, no nothing.
I wasn’t ever able to stop comparing myself to people and still do it. I feel wrecked for life, and when I tell this to people, I get told I’m a self-pitying moron.
I went to a T20 for college. Eventually graduated with a 3.73 in a social science major.
I was originally premed, and cried during calculus and organic chemistry, because while I did okay (not really lmao), people did better with much less effort. I got an A- on my first organic chemistry exam, just to have the TA, “Tamara,” tell me that “That’s not a bad start. By the way, 3 people in our lab section got into the top 10 scores for that midterm!”
I eventually earned a B+ in calculus and a B- in organic chemistry. I didn’t feel like anyone at my college could support me, academically, or emotionally, towards doing better in the rest of my premed classes, so I gave up.
I literally gave up a DREAM because I was so mentally wrecked.
Now I’m in a career I absolutely hate. I cannot work in corporate. I cannot stand the fact that all I do is make businesses richer. I’m terrible at it and have gotten bad feedback twice.