A Constant State of Chasing
By Kaelyn Brown
Dear Kaelyn,
Guess where you are now… I bet you could never guess. Well, you have completed community college and are now studying Anthropology at UC San Diego. I’m still in disbelief from time to time about how you’ve gotten here. I remember when you were about to drop out of college because you couldn’t seem to pass any of your classes. I remember when you were told “school isn’t for you,” whatever that may have meant, and I remember when those thoughts started becoming your reality and you started thinking poorly about yourself. You compared yourself to others around you because you thought that you weren’t capable of achieving something they did academically.
I remember you seriously starting to change around your third year of college. Major shifts started to take place in your academic life. You began genuinely wanting to work hard in school and started meeting with counselors to see how you could possibly complete school in the most time efficient way. Here is where the rat race began… Taking on 15 units as your first “real” semester that you truly applied yourself. A goal that consisted of getting nothing lower than a 4.0 GPA for the next 3 semesters in order to maybe receive a GPA that would be acceptable for transferring. A goal of applying to a few universities and getting into one… just one. In your mind, you had already ruled out that this was impossible for you to achieve but, it wouldn’t hurt to try.
You began your 15 units while you were working two jobs, thinking it would be a piece of cake. By week three, you were already staying up into the AM scrambling to complete assignments you had zero time to do all day because you were busy trying to financially support yourself. By your fifth week, you no longer had any time spent with friends because of the giant pile of work you were sitting on. Halfway through the semester, you hadn't seen your family and loved ones for nearly two months, which was so new for you considering how close you are with your family. By nearly the end of the semester, you had disregarded your sleep schedule, moving your body, going into nature, listening to music, and feeding yourself nourishing meals. You disregarded the most important aspects of life in order to strive to create a future for yourself, or else there may not be a very bright future ahead.
Your first semester ended, you finished with an A in every single class that you took. I remember how shocked you were because the highest grade you had ever received was a C+. That gave you a high, you felt invincible, you felt so proud of yourself for accomplishing a fraction of your goal. Soon after receiving your final grades, you realized that there had been no one around you to show this news to– you hadn’t spoken to your friends in months and I remember how badly you wanted to share this news, for it had been impossible in your mind before. It felt so nice to get a little break from the chaos that school had brought into your life… I recall you sharing some news with your coworkers about your final grades because of how proud of yourself you were, when you shared, their response was very unimpressed because they believed everyone always receives straight A’s. After hearing this, you thought about it quite a bit, which ignited the desire to try harder because one semester of a 4.0 GPA wasn’t enough– it didn’t keep you high for very long. The next semester began and you began working twice as hard like you were chasing something that had already been achieved… something that wasn’t there.
There was a sense of complete and total burnout, but you continued to receive a 4.0 GPA that semester. You didn’t have the time to reflect on the accomplishment you have made, you only had time for memorizing, studying, writing, serving, and repeating, as if you were set on autopilot. Once this semester ended, you felt major relief, only to begin again in the spring. Here you went again, drowning in homework, zero social life, and no sleep. You did it again, you received a 4.0 GPA, but with something new… a forgotten sense of self. That didn’t matter because it wasn’t you that got yourself into college, it was your grades, right?
The spring finally arrived and you heard back from every school you applied to… accepted to every, single, one. Never did you think you would get accepted into a university, let alone all five that you applied to, but again, no friends to share the news with.
Here I am now, attending UCSD for Anthropology. I have some big news for you… I don’t know exactly what I’m doing here at UC San Diego, I feel lost at times, and it is definitely more underwhelming than I had anticipated. I question whether or not the chronic stress and ‘rat race’ was worth running for the past year and a half. I question if losing my sense of self was worth getting into a school that will only make me forget it more. Was it worth losing my entire friend group and moving to an entirely new city? I guess we will find out.
One thing I did learn is that the rat race is never ending, we are in a constant state of chasing. We chase and chase until we’ve been stripped of our personality, our well-being, and sometimes, our health and then we realize there’s nothing left to chase. But, on the bright side, I accomplished something I never thought I would, only at the expense of my well-being. I’ll leave you with two questions to think about… When is the race healthy to run? Will we always be in the rat race?