Grade 10

NTC SmartClass Homeschooling Program

10:30 p.m. My eyes burn from the glare of the screen as I critique another article for our school newspaper. I’ve just finished writing my piece on the community outreach the student council organized, where I hosted a game and gave a speech. The script and songs for the school musical still need refining. Tomorrow’s agenda is quite full: Two additional articles, another round of critiquing an article, preparation for a coding contest, and with hope... some sleep?

Most people would call this burnout. I used to call it success.

For students like me, homeschoolers juggling leadership, productions, academics, competitions, and creativity, burnout has become a twisted status symbol. We wear exhaustion like medals.

Look how much I can endure. Look how worthy I am. But here’s the truth we rarely say out loud: You can’t pour from an empty cup. Glorifying burnout doesn’t make us stronger. It breaks us.

We are a generation raised on highlight reels and hustle culture. Social media constantly tells us that busy means important, suffering means commitment, and perfection means we’re lovable. I believed it.

I was born into a life of comfort. I didn’t need to work to survive or support my family. So I found other ways to prove I deserved the life I had. I chased perfect grades, perfect performances, and perfect projects. Success for me wasn’t about survival. It was about validation.

Eventually, it became something deeper and more dangerous. Perfectionism became my addiction. Every success hit like a high. But when I finally reached the top, I couldn’t feel anything anymore. No joy. No meaning. Just pressure. Sometimes, when I couldn’t find a competition to win, I invented one. I made up new rules to push myself even harder, just to prove I could beat my definition of perfect.

I am a recovering addict—a recovering perfectionist. And recovery, I’ve learned, isn’t a one-time decision. It is a daily unlearning.

We’re not weak. We’re humans.

Mental health isn’t a sidebar to our lives; it’s the foundation everything else is built on.

I’ll never forget how my body became a battlefield. The way my left eyelid developed a constant twitch that made me look like I was winking at trigonometry problems. How my hands trembled so violently, I struggled to type coherently.

Thank God I woke up when I did. But I still see the casualties everywhere.

A math Olympiad friend experienced a panic attack during the exam, leaving her test paper marred by tears. A brilliant artist, whose hands shook from exhaustion, gave up on drawing. A classmate chuckles about consuming “happy pills” as her Instagram captions scream silently in caps lock. We’ve normalized abnormal suffering. We have romanticized what should horrify us.

We glamorize exhaustion. We admire the overwhelm instead of asking if they’re okay. We praise people who skip sleep and ignore their health just to keep producing. We reward perfection over sustainability. We confuse productivity with purpose. But what if we measured success differently?

Here’s what I’m learning the hard way: Perfection is not a pinnacle. It is a prison.

Real success isn’t about how much you can take. It is about how long you can keep showing up without losing yourself. Excellence doesn’t mean being the best. It means being your best without destroying yourself in the process.

We need a new definition of success. We need a new definition of success that encompasses mental health. This new definition should prioritize sustainable passion over unsustainable pressure. Because the truth is, we were not made to burn out. We were made to burn bright.

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