Unpopular Opinion: Ivy League Kids Struggle Too
Written by Nichanun Puapattanakajorn (Neen) | Edited by Rosalyn Bejrsuwana (Rosie) | Designed by Rosalyn Bejrsuwana (Rosie) and Sanisa Kongsiri (Kym)
I honestly think people have to be some kind of fucked up to end up at a place like Penn. Like really. Which teenager in their right mind would think that working yourself to death, building a CV up and perfecting everything you do is what we call a childhood?
Don’t get me wrong, I am so grateful for the life lessons I have had and the plenty of opportunities I was given in life, and the people I have met around me have been nothing but inspiring. But you still have to be some kind of fucked up. For me, I probably fall into some category of being a workaholic with a shitload of anxiety. Coming to college, all I could think about is how to fill up my time so that I didn’t feel useless. I didn’t have time for emotions - they were too much work to deal with on top of my life already. And it seemed people around me were planning to do the same. I heard from someone that some freshman already won a coding competition by the second week of school.
Week 2, I went to the counseling center at my school, in hopes that they would speed up my emotion processing ability so I could be more productive in school. As if emotion was some annoying bug in my life instead of what made me human (again. fucked up logic.). What I got instead was a great counselor who actually taught me how to chill the fuck out and taught me how to be kinder to myself and listen to my needs.
Till this day, it’s still hard.
I’m working really hard on it. But FOMO is real. I try everyday to tell myself to pace. That my mental health is equally as important. To be kinder to myself. I tell myself that sometimes, getting out of bed when you really would rather curl up there is already an accomplishment. And some days, I have to force myself to rest and do absolutely nothing, because that rest time is just as important as being productive.
If I were the person I was when I started freshman year, I would have brushed off advice to take a chill pill. I thought being told that taking time for yourself is important felt like things people said just because, but no one actually does it, right? It would have felt like procrastination. And yes, it is easy to get distracted when you’re working and end up on Youtube for 4 hours straight but it is so hard to intentionally schedule out time to allow myself to enjoy those 4 hours instead of guiltily letting the playlist run on. It might sound really easy not to do work, but actually, it is so fucking hard to force yourself to stay still when the rest of your environment is so fast paced.
You will always feel behind. I don’t know if I would ever grow out of this. And to be honest, I still find a guilty kind of satisfaction from filling up my schedule way too much. But I hope with time, people start to see more value in chilling out, taking care of each other and ourselves and less in trying to chase after some idolized version of what the perfect student or successful person should look like.
I know it’s hard especially because our society is structured to reward the grind. But a girl can dream, right?
