the perverse consequences of academic achievement
getting good grades screwed up my life
Content Warning: This post explores aspects of mental health and contains discussion of self-harm and suicide. Please read with care.
If you are in crisis, call or text 988 (or 1-800-273-8255) for help in the U.S. You are not alone.
I am going to be frank with you: I have not been doing well lately. Last year, when I got my book deal (what I quit my stable job to try and do! what I have wanted since I was young!) and still wasn’t happy, I realized I needed to go back to therapy.1
All the successes I strove for in life were band-aids for a bigger problem. Probably the biggest problem that I’ve had all my life that has never been addressed because I convinced myself that if I just kept on moving, it would resolve itself. The problem that I don’t truly, not really, not in a meaningful way, want to live.
I first became aware that I was alive—a living, breathing organism who was supposed to simply carry on—when I was 12. I’m not saying I wasn’t sentient before—I have a pretty good memory and remember a lot from my childhood—but I was never aware of the fact that not only was I alive, but I was supposed to be alive. That no matter how hard things got or felt, it was expected of me to figure it out and move on. (I suppose that’s why I loved books and the internet so much—they always felt like a repository of answers, a way to “figure it out and move on.”)
I was also 12 when I thought about hurting myself for the first time. I got really good grades, and a lot of praise for it—so much so that I became terrified of one day not getting good grades. Logically diagramming it out, I thought:
good grades → love
(If I get good grades, then I will receive love.)
no good grades → no love
(If I don’t get good grades, then I won’t receive love.)
Which I learned is actually a common logical fallacy while studying for the LSAT nine years later. The correct logical contrapositive is no love → no good grades (if I don’t receive love, then I do not have good grades) which… also isn’t a great schema, but whatever. Teenagers have great logic, said no one ever.
Your brain, especially at that age, is trying to come up with schemas—mental shortcuts it can take allowing you to more efficiently navigate the world. (If you’re interested in learning more about schemas and emotions, this conversation between Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is excellent.) But what happens if those schemas are harmful? What happens if those schemas center around a default assumption that you are not good, you are not worthy, you are not enough?
Well, that schema deeply affected me. (Still affects me, to this day.) I both anticipated and dreaded high scores on assignments and exams. If I got an A+, I hated it; if I didn’t get an A+, I also hated it.
I was haunted by the specter of perfection. So much so that I started engaging in secret, destructive-adjacent activities—reading books with catastrophic characters like Go Ask Alice, pressing the sharp edge of a pair of scissors against the skin of my inner forearm (but never actually breaking skin because I’m a coward), fantasizing about ingesting a bottle of sleeping pills in the bath—activities that were indisputably not perfect, not what I was “supposed to do.” My mind became my haven from the omnipresent expectation of perfection that I—and my parents, and my teachers, and my friends—had for me, whether explicitly (my parents and me) or implicitly (my teachers and friends).
I don’t know how—I think I told a few friends about what I had been doing, and they reported me to adults at school—but I got called into the guidance counselor’s office and sat in front of an adult I had never seen before.
“So,” she began, “I hear that you have been thinking about suicide lately.”
I nodded. There was nothing to argue against. I wondered what she was going to say. What does anyone say to something like that?
“This is called,” she paused, “suicidal ideation.” Su-i-ci-dal I-de-at-ion. I had never heard the term before, but it sounded distant. Clinical. A neat term for very messy emotions.
The guidance counselor continued: “Now, you need to tell your parents about this. Okay? Go home and tell your parents.”
I nodded again. It didn’t occur to me how absolutely silly it was to just order me to tell my parents—what if my parents were the cause of my suicidal ideation?—but I was still deeply respectful of authority figures at this time. I didn’t think twice about following her instructions.
I went home and told my parents that I needed to talk to them. I explained to them, very calmly, that I had been called into the school guidance counselor’s office and was told that my recent thoughts were suicidal ideation. I waited for their response. I actually wasn’t sure if they knew this term—suicidal ideation—because it sounded so clinical to me. But they did. Because the next thing my mom said was, in the coldest tone I can remember: “How dare you do this to us.” Period, not question mark.
How dare I suggest that this life they gave me wasn’t good enough. How dare I tell friends, tell the school. How dare I indulge my silly emotions and write bad poetry about how “dark” my soul was. How dare I. How dare I. How dare I do this to them.
This was my first introduction to real adult obligation—something I had to do, regardless of how I felt. I had to live, no matter what. And in that moment, the world turned grayscale. The future turned grayscale. I saw my life extend before me as an infinite series of adult obligations—going to a “good” college, getting “good” grades, getting a “good” job, having a “good” marriage, raising “good” kids—and felt unbearably claustrophobic. Instead of a series of exciting events to come, my future felt like a list of never-ending obligations, an unstoppable avalanche of opportunities for letting others down.
My parents and I never talked about this again. I never brought up complex emotions with them again. It wasn’t that I stopped thinking about suicide. I simply kicked the can further down the road—I’ll live whatever life I can muster and kill myself at 40, I decided. That mindset helped me, on a day-to-day basis, interact with my parents and those around me while keeping the immense dread at bay—at least until I’m 40. I hoped that by 40, maybe I would feel differently. Maybe all the adult obligations would somehow make up a life worth living.
I’m seven-and-a-half years away from that deadline I set twenty years ago—and I still don’t know if I want to live, in the grand sense, in a long-term way. I still feel that I am continually performing adult obligations rather than living a life worth living. I thought so many things in life would help me feel otherwise—the pedigree that my parents and I had always wanted, an impressive job, great friends, a loving partner—but I am slowly coming to the realization that the only person who can help me feel otherwise is me. Myself. That 12-year-old me inside, who first asked the question Is life worth living? and no one answered. ◆
How do you feel the idea of academic achievement impacted your life? Join the private thread I’ll be creating for paid subscribers later today to talk about it. Threads are private, paid subscriber-only spaces where readers can have a real discussion with me and like-minded individuals. All are welcome, except those engaging in bad faith. (You know who you are.)
If you enjoyed this post, consider upgrading your subscription or sharing this post:
Becoming a paid subscriber gives you access to my inner sanctum—essays and private podcast episodes on nascent ideas that need to be nurtured like newborn kittens. Subscribing also helps ensure that my informational and educational content on Substack and all other platforms remains freely available to all.
Please know, though, that having you here and being able to be in conversation with you is the most important thing to me. If you are a student without disposable income, un-or under-employed, or a minimum-wage worker, just email me or fill out this form and I’ll comp you a free subscription, no questions asked. If you’d like to donate one of these subscriptions, you can do so here.
Which I am in now—mountains and mountains, multiple times a week supplemented by workbooks. It sucks so bad, I cry constantly, and yet, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I feel so lucky to have ever gotten to a point in my life where I have the time, space, and finances to do such extensive therapy. It’s an extraordinary privilege that many—including every other member of my family—do not have.
I want to acknowledge how hard it is to put yourself out there in this vulnerable way to so many people.
With posting something like this, there can be a fear of "What will others think? Will they think less of me?" Well, any reasonable person reading this would NEVER think less of you; in fact, just the opposite. It makes your humanity expand & emerge even clearer and demonstrates a quiet bravery that is underrated in our world.
"It wasn’t that I stopped thinking about suicide. I simply kicked the can further down the road—I’ll live whatever life I can muster and kill myself at 40, I decided."
People go their entire lives without confronting their inner messiness.
Thank YOU for being braving enough to do so and sharing with all of us