when everything isn't enough
facing the fear of failure and managing an identity crisis as a former "gifted" kid
songs to listen to while reading:
Cherry Waves - Deftones
Gilded Lily - Cults
Sparks - Coldplay
This post was inspired by Malcolm Harris’ interview with P.E. Moskowitz.
Please forgive me, I know I told you guys a few weeks ago that I had stuff cooking up in the drafts, which is true, but there’s been a few roadblocks:
I sprained my ankle (and still went to see Kali Uchis, great concert, bad idea)
I’m dogsitting
I’m taking a summer school course
Now that my excuses are out of the way, I’ll cut to the chase.
The main reason why I haven’t been posting is not a lack of ideas, but instead a struggle of amalgamating all the thoughts and feelings I have into writing. Emotional writer’s block, I guess. I know what I want to say, and I can say it in my head, but when it comes to writing it out, I just stare at what I’ve already written and rewrite, re-edit, and re-do. If I haven’t written anything, I’ll dwell on the blank screen for a bit and then close my computer because in tangible form, it either doesn’t look right, sound right, or feel right.
See Alaïa Soars’ piece about writer’s block:
And Rithana’s on creating:
I don’t know exactly why I am sharing this with you, maybe some sort of justification for myself for not regularly posting as I used to, or to gain your sympathy. The truth is, I’m used to striving for perfection, and that delays whatever content I want to publish or go public with. Originally, I was going to title this post “Being smart was my whole world…” but decided against it because I wanted not to include just one facet (intelligence) of myself, and go deeper into why being smart was my main personality trait starting in elementary school all the way to senior year.
Why was that everything to me?
This morning, I received a rejection email from a department at my university for a job I had applied for. I won’t lie, it was kind of devastating. Okay, maybe not catastrophic, but definitely disappointing. I had been banking on that job for the school year, and as a person who likes certainty, I had to reevaluate my plans.
The most difficult part though, was reminding myself that rejections happen all the time and that it wasn’t personally directed to me. Coming to terms with the fact that this will eventually be a tiny hurdle in the past when I’m old and decrepit, did not really match what it was like to open the email and read the words “unfortunately,” and feel a crushing weight atop my chest.
My first thoughts were: Am I not good enough?
Followed by: Was it the interview? My grades? My application? My writing? Me?
And started the spiralling. I wanted to snap out of it, but when these kinds of thoughts start, it’s hard to stop them from going. Ending up alone with these thoughts and also being a chronic overthinker is not new to me, and yet I cannot pinpoint exactly when I started approaching life this way.
Or can I?
Let’s take a trip back down memory lane, and bear with me while I recount basically my entire comprehensive academic journey with you. Sit back, relax, and pop open a beverage, because this is about to get exhaustive. I won’t really include a timeline, but give you a general gist of my lore.
I was born to immigrant parents who happened to both be teachers at the same private Christian school, the school I went to for all my 13 years of education. They met there, and it was basically my second home. I hate to say it, but I was some sort of “nepo-baby” who really didn’t want to be in the spotlight but was nonetheless due to my parent’s commitment to the community.
They raised me to love learning and supplied me with an endless amount of resources (my dad is a music teacher and my mom taught Kindergarten and eventually became a teacher-librarian) to increase my chances of success in the world of academia. In simple terms, my childhood was full of literature and stimuli. By age 2/3 I had an extensive vocabulary, and by age 3/4 could read independently. When my first year of school rolled around, I was quickly whisked off like every other student for an educational assessment, and the results showed: drumroll, please…
That I had a 5th-grade reading level and literacy skills beyond what was expected at that age. As well, I could read the smallest of social cues, and was referred to as “wise beyond my years” or “mature for my age”.
Wow! I’m so surprised!
Thus began the comments that I was gifted, articulate, a pleasure to have in class, a role model, a star student, and yes, a teacher’s pet. I was placed next to “rowdy” or “distracting” boys who needed someone to “calm them down” or provide “ a sense of what behaviour should look like.”
Now, I’m no psychologist, but developing a complex at such a young age opens the doors to the so-called “gifted kid pipeline.” When you Google “gifted kid pipeline” a bunch of Twitter screenshots come up, and it’s even part of the Know Your Meme database! That’s how I know I’m not alone in this.
Now, this “theme” is not just prevalent on Twitter, but on TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit. Hashtags like #neurodivergent, #autistic, #giftedkid, and #burnout, are being used everywhere, which leads me to infer that the “gifted kid” phenomenon is definitely not new, and is not a realization that I am making myself.
Going off of that, there are other words for “gifted” but since this is written from the perspective of a 19-year-old college student, I won’t go too deep into it because I have to do more research before I make any claims or state any facts. There are also many reasons why not to use the word, and I’ll attach some definitions here if you want to go down the rabbit hole.
What’s the Difference Between a Prodigy, a Genius, and a Savant?
I’ve never had my IQ officially tested, so I’m using the term “gifted” lightly. I’ve also not had an official diagnosis from a doctor for anything except for anxiety, so I’m just elaborating on personal experience here.
With that out of the way, let’s get back into it.
I went on to win a geography bee in 4th grade, and report cards came back with “applies herself well to class” and “a wonderful student.” My grades never dipped below 90 until my sophomore year of high school.
In high school, there were two streams, a regular stream, and an “honours accelerated” stream that you could have the option of choosing for some classes. In order to get into the latter, you had to take an aptitude test to determine whether you were fit for the program or not.
I got in.
From that point on, I wasn’t pushing myself to be better, or to achieve more, I was “competing” against other students in order to obtain academic validation. Phrases like “What did you get?” and “OMG I did so bad!” were tossed around nonchalantly and suddenly became common talk. We all had one goal in common, to get into a good university and to get good grades. My school demographic was also predominantly Asian, so cultural pressures paired with a high-stress environment, as well as the desire to leave a “legacy” for such a small community became the perfect recipe for burnout.
But it wasn’t just that. Part of it was me. For some reason, I needed, I craved validation, and cared deeply about the way people perceived me and my reputation as the “good Christian girl with good grades and good morals.” Imposter syndrome is talked about a lot on this blog, and it was very real to me in high school. I was so scared that if I made one mistake or got in trouble that it would ruin my life, my chances at higher education, and my reputation. Perhaps I can attribute this to my own pride, or selfish sense of being, but when you’re part of a community that is so interconnected, news spreads fast.
I remember the first time I truly felt like a failure. Because of the accelerated program, I took Chemistry courses a year advanced, and quickly learned that science and math weren’t for me. On my first Chemistry test, I got a 53. My teacher at the time pulled me aside and asked if I was okay because that was so “unlike me” and I simply responded that I did not understand the material. This was new to me, as for the better part of elementary and middle school, the curriculum was easy to learn and I “got it” very quickly.
For the first time, I didn’t get it.
You might say, “Rach, now you know what it’s like to be like the rest of us!” I get where you’re coming from, because I’m in that position in university, envying the people in my class who “get it.”
That process repeated with Math 10, Pre-Calculus 11, Chemistry 11, and Chemistry 12. I always knew that my brain did not comprehend numbers the way that others did, but in the past I was able to meet the requirements by turning my homework in, participating in class, and being on time.
Getting a 53 was crushing, but made me sort of more comfortable with not being used to getting perfect grades. A paradox in itself. That’s the thing with burnout, suddenly a bare pass is enough.
I still graduated with a 3.9/4.0 GPA (depends on the grading scale), and my transcript was probably one of the weirdest ones that the Department of Education had seen that year. There was not one grade in the 80s, and everything was 90+ excluding the courses above which were both 70 or 70 something. I had made honour roll every year, gotten top student in multiple subjects, countless awards, certificates, and positive referrals.
And it still wasn’t enough for me.
I wasn’t enough for me.
This was hard to write because I never want to seem pretentious, attention-seeking, or like I’m bragging when I post. I hope that you don’t paint a one-sided picture of me because I mention my failures, achievements, and a few statistics, and I hope that this doesn’t come off as a tragic warning not to send your kids to private school.
On the night of convocation, diploma in hand, I stared at it and wondered, was pushing myself to the brink worth it? Were weekly panic attacks worth it? Was not eating over a test worth it? Was a simple piece of paper worth all the hard work, sleepless nights, tear-filled breakdowns, and identity crises worth it? I had gotten into the university of my choice, and I had everything I wanted, a boyfriend, a good group of friends, pretty supportive parents, a great education, and…
I felt terrible.
On the surface, everything was picture-perfect.
On the inside, my world was crashing down, the world I had built on the basis of being smart, everything was falling apart and I didn’t know why. Was it my self-esteem? Or was it something else?
I had checked into school-run counselling the year prior, and one of the first things my guidance counsellor said to me was:
“So, why are you here?”
I didn’t know why I was sitting on the soft couch, fingernails scratching the upholstery, fluorescent lights glaring, him sitting across in a rolling office chair, hands clasped together.
I told him the truth.
I didn’t know.
Through weekly sessions, we took a deep dive into my trauma, and it was painful, tiresome, and hard to understand (much like this blogpost is ;)
We explored my desperate need to people-please, fear of abandonment, imposter syndrome, boundaries and the ability to say no, and self-worth. Sometimes I would cry, sometimes I would laugh, and nevertheless, he would slowly nudge and push me to try and understand the way my brain was wired, and why I needed to be admired.
Without my grades as a buffer, I was a nobody, a shell of a girl who was scared of vulnerability and attachment and used school as a coping mechanism and an outlet. Take that away and then I felt like I had to prove my uniqueness or place in the world, or I would have nothing to show for it.
I stopped therapy about two weeks before graduation, and our last session was a farewell/check-in, a long rant about how I didn’t know how I would function without him. I left his office with mixed feelings, yet knowing that younger me had found the strength to get help.
Enter university.
I took a second-year statistics course in the first semester of my first year of university which is really stupid looking back. That was the class I got 9/30 on my midterm. Yes, you read that right. 9/30. By some miracle, I passed the class, but I had to adjust my standards greatly and almost reset my brain into changing the preconceived expectations I had. I was no longer a “gold star student” in a high school of 100, I was a tiny fish in a gigantic pond, and it was freeing, but I also had to come to terms with losing a safety net.
In high school, I knew exactly what teachers were looking for and would craft my answers and responses to be what they wanted to hear. In university, the professors want to hear your voice, so that tactic to get good grades did not work anymore. I tried to be original and to show my voice, but professors also have criteria, so no matter how hard I tried, the best I could do was a 70. Not bad, but high school me would probably have had a heart attack if she saw that number.
Now that I’m finished my first year, I’m trying to escape burnout, or at least know when I need to get help. Hopefully, I’ll start therapy again, or find healthy ways to cope.
Applying for the aforementioned university was a process in itself, and I spent months on the same Google doc writing and editing my responses for scholarships, grants, and other “backup” universities. The day the application for “the one” was due, I was a wreck, a mess of anxiety, stress, and anticipation.
Would I be good enough?
See Eve Slemp’s article:
I had made the decision to get 3 teachers, 3 students, and my guidance counsellor to edit or make suggestions on my application. Of course with that many people, you get many different opinions, some of which were conflicting. There was so much noise, and I needed my mind to be silent.
An hour before it was due, I had a nervous breakdown.
I had been rewriting and deleting and rephrasing, questioning my original thoughts (were they original enough??) and trying to make it better while simultaneously making it worse.
I looked at my mom for direction, eyes brimming with tears, hands shaking so bad I couldn’t type, and managed to choke out:
“I don’t know what to do.”
Asking for help was an unfamiliar sensation, and was usually a last-ditch resort for a crisis. It was almost like I was so dependent on my capabilities, skills, and potential stemming from being “gifted” that my brain was unable to ask for help.
It wasn’t in my vocabulary.
She sat down next to me, let out a sigh, grabbed my hand, looked me straight in the eyes, and said:
“Leave it, that’s enough, you’ve done enough.”
If someone hasn’t told you this today,
You are enough.
I've never read a piece about the connection between academic validation and one's self-worth that was so perfectly written like this. It made me feel more understanding towards myself. As my first time here reading your newsletter, I'm really impressed by your writing style and your storytelling skills. I hope you're feeling A LOT better now 💕
Amazing post as always, Rach! All of your thoughts about deriving self-worth and identity from academic validation are so (painfully) relatable, and you always articulate things with such precision and self-awareness. Thank you for sharing 💙