I thought I could do it: full time student, full time waitress. No biggy. It was easy in high school, so it should’ve been easy in college.


I graduated with a little of 1,000 kids. We were on a 5.0 scale, so competition among AP students was immense. I think we have at least one kid at all the major Ivys.

I was wrong. So wrong.

As Dass quotes- “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s, there are few” (Roshi 208). Though this quote seems to describe my expectations, I don’t think it fits where I was in my life at that time. I wasn’t a beginner. I’ve had a job since I was 15, and I was practically a full time employee of Papasito’s my junior and senior year. I had honed my skills- I knew what it took to keep running from 6 in the morning to 11 (or later) at night.


I imagine I was something of a triathlete in high school. I held some kind of leadership position in most of my extra curricular activities, I volunteered twice a month, and I worked 4 or 5 days a week.

Of course there were times in high school where I felt like I was “putting out more than [I] got back” (184), and, though I couldn’t see any immediate, tangible rewards (besides the extra 20 I had to see a show) I never felt the “growing burden of personal responsibility [that] leads to exhaustion and frustration” (184). I think this is because I always felt like I was working towards something greater- I had a deadline, and, once I reached it, I could relax.


This was my goal; what I was running towards the University of Chicago.

However, this was not the case. The supposed challenges I had experienced in high school were nothing in comparison to college. It’s not that the course material was hard, but there was just so much of it! It’s not that I didn’t care, it was that I didn’t know what to care more about. On top of all of this I had to get a job. The bit of money that I didn’t throw into my tuition went to my expected living expenses, but it wasn’t lasting very long. Within the first three weeks of working at Red Lobster I began to want to “give up on [myself]; [i] just haven’t the resources, [i]’ve nothing left for others, [i’m] barely holding on ourselves” (185). I noticed that I no longer enjoyed the classes that I had previously loved. “As [my] heart begins to close down, joy and inspiration give way to apathy and resignation” (185). I didn’t understand what was going on.


the biscuits from red lobster that everyone loves... I am a strong believer in the idea that one's diet affects their mental stability. For one week I was eating nothing but these biscuits, because my schedule never allowed for a convent time to eat. I think it was this lapse in my overall healthy diet that contributed to my mental breakdown.

And then it finally hit me. I was burnt out. I was running a marathon still, but I had no idea how long it would take or where it would end. I don’t have a goal, a time limit, so it’s much easier for me to feel the fatigue and apathy suffocating me. In high school I had spent 3 years running myself into the ground, excusing my obsessive behavior because I thought that- eventually- I could stop worrying about money and my GPA because I’d be in college. However, not only am I still obsessing over grades and money, but I don’t know at what point in my life I will ever get to take a break- pass the baton.