From the moment I stepped into the first grade, I carried a small but growing responsibility on my shoulders — to do my best, and then even better. It wasn’t a burden anyone forced on me. It came from within. I liked doing well. I liked seeing the stars beside my name, the proud looks on my parents’ faces, the quiet approval of teachers. So I worked. Day after day, year after year, I studied with all the energy my little body could muster. And it showed. I graduated grade school as the class valedictorian. It was no surprise to anyone — I had been first honor from the very beginning.
When I entered high school, the pressure didn’t let up. If anything, it intensified. I wasn’t just a good student anymore; I was the student everyone looked to. The one who always raised their hand, got the highest score, submitted the cleanest project. I kept my head down and kept pushing, fueled by a fear of falling behind and a need to meet expectations — both mine and everyone else’s. Again, I graduated at the top of my class. Another medal, another speech, another round of applause.
By the time I reached college, you might expect I had developed some healthy confidence from all my achievements. But the truth was more complicated. I was tired. Not in the lazy sense — but in the deep, soul-weary sense of someone who had spent too many years chasing perfection. Still, I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I pursued my studies with the same sharp focus. I gave every assignment everything I had. I read every chapter, answered every question, aced almost every exam. I graduated as valedictorian again, and with honors — cum laude. From the outside, I looked like a model of discipline and brilliance. Inside, I was quietly burning out.
What people didn’t see was that I had become traumatized by studying. The mere thought of having to sit down and study again after graduation filled me with dread. So I didn’t. I avoided anything that resembled school, learning, or the pressure to be the best. That’s why I never pursued a master’s degree. It wasn’t that I couldn’t. It was that I wouldn’t. I had had enough of books, lectures, and the invisible weight that came with each exam.
Ironically — and life has a sense of humor like that — my first job after graduation had everything to do with reading. I became a copy editor. My task? To read and edit medical articles written by doctors, scientists, and researchers from all over the world. Articles filled with complex ideas, dense data, and academic language. I did this for seven years. Seven years of reading, catching errors, fixing grammar, standardizing terms, and making sense of some of the most complicated material out there.
It was a strange twist. I had run away from studying only to land in a job that required me to read for a living. But it wasn’t the same as school. There were no grades, no competitions, no rankings. Just me, the text, and the satisfaction of cleaning up sentences and making things clearer. In the beginning, I approached the work with the same intensity that had defined my student years. Every comma mattered. Every typo was a crisis. My eyes scanned pages like lasers. My ears twitched at the sound of grammatical mistakes. Even casual conversations weren’t safe — I would silently edit what people said in real-time.
At some point, I realized I wasn’t really listening to people anymore. I wasn’t hearing their meaning. I was just filtering their words through an invisible red pen in my head. It wasn’t healthy, and it definitely wasn’t fun. I had turned into a machine that spotted flaws before it felt connection. That’s when I knew something had to change.
So I let go, little by little. I started to forgive mistakes — mine and others’. I allowed myself to hear people without judging their grammar. I let typos slide in text messages. I stopped correcting every little error. It felt strange at first, like I was betraying the sharp, precise editor in me. But over time, it felt freeing. I remembered what it was like to be human. To make mistakes and be okay with them.
And then something surprising happened. I started learning again. Not in the rigid, structured way I used to — but in a more open and curious way. I joined leadership trainings. I took online courses on Coursera. I applied for and received a scholarship for Harvard Online through the company I worked for. I started feeding my brain again, but this time, with love, not fear.
There was still one subject I avoided: German. After moving to Germany, I knew learning the language was inevitable. But I resisted. It felt like going back to the pressure of school — the memorization, the grammar rules, the fear of being wrong. I told myself I could get by with English. I told myself I’d learn “someday.”
But deep down, I knew that if I wanted to truly stay in the game — professionally, socially, emotionally — I had to face it. German wasn’t just a language. It was a gateway to belonging, to thriving in a new place. And slowly, I’m getting there. It’s not easy. Some days I slip back into that old fear of getting things wrong. But most days, I remind myself: I’ve come a long way. I’ve carried books like armor and worn medals like scars. I’ve read for a living and unlearned perfection. I’ve stopped running, and started choosing — to learn, to grow, to be whole.
So here I am. Still learning. Just not the way I used to. And maybe that’s the biggest lesson of all.
