I have always regarded myself as ambitious, and my supposed ambitions have often manifested in the academic. For a while, these ambitions seemed to be on a steady path to fulfillment. During my first semester at a four-year university, I kept the 4.0 I had carried with me all throughout community college. I had worked hard to get to where I was, and it was with an immense pride that I saw that my academic efforts could still result in the grades I wanted.
During the second semester, it was with a racing mind and a sense of impending doom that I found myself incapable of performing as I once had. I no longer found joy in the readings I had once cherished for their art and meaning, and where pride had been, I could only summon resentment. Driven on by the demands I had become accustomed to placing on myself, I continued to make futile attempts at restoring my former status. As sudden as the collapse seemed to me then, it appears inevitable to me now. I was in an environment laden with minefields that I could not help but touch.
In short, I burned out. It took a year for me to realize that I could no longer stay at the institution I was in. I took a leave of absence, a decision which fills me with both gratitude for having made it, and regret that I did not come to it sooner. To be clear, my academic burnout manifested in a mind that was already unwell, and my ultimate appreciation for it likely stems from this root. Burnout is a wretched thing, and the damage it causes is real and frequently devastating. All that being said, what my burnout ultimately represents is a tipping point where my methods of compensating for my mind were revealed as the beasts of fear that they were.
As a child, I had a bullet-point list for success: First, you do well in middle school so you could get into a good high school. Then, you do well in high school so you can get into a good college. Finally, you do well in college to have a good life. Otherwise, you end up worthless and a failure. It was a clear instance of a child’s logic, simplistic and shallow, yet as I grew, it became an unspoken truism, a belief that was had not so much in words but in fear.
I started off well — the selective-enrollment high school of my choice accepted me, which was, of course, the most elite of its kind in the city I live in. It took a year for my first academic burnout to begin.
I took an AP course that assigned 50-page readings for each class, alongside thorough notes and the expectation of regular quizzes on the material. It was normal for a student to complain of taking six hours or more to complete the readings, and complaints of the physical effects of sleep deprivation were constant. I began the class completing the readings at the common six hours until my attention drained as my anxiety grew. The hours grew longer. I soon found myself incapable of processing such extensive information in the time frame assigned. In desperation, the hours I spent sleeping reduced until I napped two hours upon my return home, then continued until it was time for me to attend school once more.
As one may expect, my mental health did not sustain this blow. Nor did my grades. After taking the AP exam, I cried in the bathroom, thinking how useless my suffering had been. I failed, receiving a two. I remembered my teacher bragging how the lowest score a student had ever received in his class was a three, and I felt the shame set in.
Afterwards, I became utterly disillusioned with academics. This disillusionment only grew, culminating in a mental breakdown during the summer class I had to attend after failing. This breakdown continued for months afterwards, only weaning in intensity when my psychiatrist placed me on the correct medication.
I took a gap year between high school and community college. Upon returning, I found that not only could I do well, but I excelled. It was common for me to receive perfect scores. I became filled with pride upon my success and felt an immense sense of happiness whenever I saw that I had done well. As ridiculous as it sounds, I remember shaking with elation as I clutched at my score of 109% in geology as the professor went over the class average.
I held my grades as evidence that I was worthy: even despite how hard basic living could be for me, I could at least do this one thing. Those around me seemed to navigate with an ease through domains which I had never mastered, areas of life which were shrouded with cloud and rife with stone. I felt damned and yearned to have the piece of the puzzle that they appeared to have within them since birth. I took my struggle as a point of pride. Yes, it was hard and, yes, I constantly felt on the brink of falling apart, yet look at what I could do. Even as difficult as it was, I could still excel. I feared I was fundamentally incapable, and academics offered ready evidence that I was not.
Yet I knew that all was not well. After I enrolled in a four-year university, the seeds which I had sown took root. At times, I joked to myself that the secret to maintaining a 4.0 was basing your self-worth on grades. To some extent, I knew what I was doing. I led an unbalanced life, as I spared no time for developing what laid beyond academics. I had no friends, and my efforts to develop friendships were minimal. I was unemployed as well. My efforts to rectify this situation mirrored my efforts to rectify my social life. I felt shame for this, yet I could not recognize that it was in my fear that I drove this imbalance. My urge to compensate grew, and so too did the imbalance.
Finally, the year-long burnout struck. A trip to Target triggered it. A funny little detail that still strikes me as pathetic and bizarre. I had gone to Target for a reason long forgotten, and when I got there, I found that the isolation induced by the pandemic had heightened my social anxiety.
It felt as if my surroundings were pressing down on me. All sensory detail seemed excessive. Overbright and overloud. There were far too many people, and I could feel their eyes boring into me, even as I knew these stares were likely imagined.
My anxiety only grew as I left the target, the ground laden with snow and visibility drastically reduced by my mask and the now absent sun. My glasses fogged, and I stumbled the entire route to my dorm.
I accomplished little that day. It took hours for me to calm myself, and when I went to bed that night, I told myself that tomorrow would be better. It wasn’t.
The tomorrows collected until I finally realized that I had been crying hysterically every night, and my thoughts raced much too fast for any meaning from my readings to process. Times would calm, and my mood would seem to ease, until I was plunged back into what I came to realize was a state of illness.
Summer break came, and this state of mind only continued. My attempts to soothe it were minimal, too caught up in the chaos to recognize that it was time to come down. The next semester came, and though there were good times, I was disillusioned and now distanced from my workload. I became filled with a hatred, and I did not know to what or whom I directed this hatred. I was exhausted, and I had no sense of time. The days seemed to be caught in an endless loop of failure and misery.
Finally, the spring semester came, and I decided I could stand this no longer. I was behind in all my readings, and all improvements on my mental state which had come during the break had nearly all gone. I left heartbroken and alone, but I knew it was the right thing to do. This conclusion has only strengthened as the days have passed.
Without my burnout, I would not have come to a place where I could develop or grow. I cannot discern what my future would have been if I stayed. With the help of therapy, I have realized that I have spent my life operating on moving away from fear. I did not move forward, even though I dreamed of reaching great heights — I ran away. I did everything in my power to evade pain, loss, fear. As a result, I became stunted. Nearly all of my previous coping mechanisms were unsustainable, as their foundations laid in my fear.
Now, it seems as if I am starting from the root — learning to shift my focus to a great unknown.
