It’s no news to us that college is often described as the “best years of our lives”, a period in our youth that’s filled with freedom, opportunity and discovering ourselves. But beneath the glamorous parties and the enviable Instagram feeds lie a reality that nearly everyone faces: the feeling of never feeling enough.
the endless college checklist
A large part of it is intertwined with college culture, where success seems to have a hundred definitions at once. Our grades, internships, leadership roles, extracurriculars and even our social circles are compared and dissected all the time. It’s an eternal checklist we keep obsessing over, that’s just somehow never truly over. It’s an exhaustion that follows you like a shadow, feeding into your deepest fears and insecurities.
For some of us, it shows up as the need to be productive all the time and the insurmountable guilt that we feel when we rest. For others, it’s the panic that arises while looking at other people’s achievements, wondering where we went wrong in our lives. And for most of us, it’s that hollow feeling that arises even after doing well, because every success feels like a requirement rather than an achievement. It’s dealing with the pressure of having to do more, more and more without ever feeling fulfilled.
never feeling enough: THE INSTAGRAM ILLUSION
What makes it harder is how normal it all looks from the outside. Everyone seems like they’ve got it all figured out and seem to be absolutely thriving, seamlessly juggling multiple responsibilities while you’re exhausting yourself just trying to get to classes on time. But if you’ve ever cried in the library bathroom or stayed up doomscrolling till 3am, you’re not alone. We are held to unimaginable standards and are expected to excel at every one of them, while constantly comparing the worst versions of ourselves to the carefully curated lives of people on the internet.
However, this exhaustion is a completely valid, human reaction to existing in a world that assesses your value based on how much you can do, rather than who you are as a person. What we often forget is that we are still figuring it out. In fact, we will be figuring it out for the rest of our lives. Your self worth isn’t supposed to be tied to your GPA or the number of likes you got on your last post.
LEARNING TO HIT PAUSE
It’s hard to slow down and take a breath when it seems like you’re always falling behind, no matter what you do. But sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to just exist as you are. It’s important to give yourself grace when you feel overwhelmed and to celebrate the small wins, even if it’s just waking up to your alarm on a tough day. This is your sign to stop spreading yourself thin just to fit into a version of success that was never meant for you.
If you fervently nodded along, or even shed a tear or two while reading this, here’s your gentle reminder: You’re already enough! Not when you land that internship, not when you get the grade and certainly not when you feel caught up with everyone. You’re enough right now. You don’t have to wait to measure up to social constructs of success to feel that way. Amongst all of the messiness of college, it’s time to learn how to be kind to yourself, especially when the world is not. So just breathe. As someone who’s still learning how to navigate this journey, I can tell you that it’s absolutely not easy. But it’s not a linear path. You will figure it all out at your own pace, and in the long run that’s the only thing that matters!
