Confessions of an Overachiever
It was a room full of about twenty new grad students, and I was but one of two Asians in it. In retrospect there was nothing wrong with this, but at the time I couldn’t help but feel a despairing sense of imposter syndrome: I couldn’t help but question if I belonged there, if I was in over my head, and if I needed to “stay in my lane” and be happy what how things were.
But the truth is, the status quo hasn’t really ever been my style. As a child, I was taught to believe I had it in me to achieve; hours of forced listening to my Dad’s motivational tapes as he drove my siblings and me during family trips and to errands somehow bore into my mind that I was capable, I could do it, I could succeed. And as much as I tried to fight those droning words when I was younger, they seem to have become a part of who I am (thanks, Dad). As I’ve gotten older, it's become more of a personal goal to venture outside of the norm, whether it meant to not doggedly pursuing procreation, not hanging around for hours to endlessly shoot the breeze when I knew deep down that there was something I had to do, someone different I wanted to be.
If anything has motivated me these days, it’s been to work toward being a person who can help champion others to reach that next level, through my roles as a teacher, as a mentor, as a daughter, sister, and wife. And as scary as it is to move forward and chart the unknown, deep down in my soul I know that I am meant for something more, that the “norm” is nothing I want to be.
Fading away are the days of me following the crowd because “he did it” or because “she said so.” Spending so much of my childhood and adolescence chasing down the pipe dreams of others and never feeling I was enough only left me feeling unfulfilled, a sorry piece of the predisposed rat race that I believed I had to be a part of. My pursuit of attaining a different vision has at times been even uncharted, even lonely at times, but it’s nothing that I don’t embrace when I keep the big picture in mind.
For the dissenters, I may probably come off as someone who doesn’t know how to shut off, and I think I’ve heard it all: “You’re going to school again?”, “But everyone else your age is buying a house,” or “You just need to have a kid.” Truth be told, those thoughts are meant with good intentions but are often hurtful, and at the end of the day they’ll only make me work harder toward fulfilling my goals. Of course, it’s not like I don’t know how to relax: whether it means limiting social media to focus on my own life or carving out free time to travel and spend time with loved ones, I know what the important things are in my life and try my darndest to prioritize. And at the end of the day, I have to remember that there is a difference between doing busy work and working toward a goal.
Knowing who I am, where I came from, and where I want to be makes it even more important to achieve: at the end of the day, if I can help even one person realize that goals can be grasped and that we are worth who we set out to be, then I have done exactly what I set out to do. Call this the pursuit of the hustle, call me an overachiever, but experience has taught me to appreciate that time is of the essence, that life is limited, that I live each day exactly once and that I better be damn sure I take advantage of it.
