In high school, you were the one with the lowest grades in your friend group. Your friends poked fun at you for getting a 70 on your physics test because they barely studied and got 90's, but you studied for hours. They made you doubt yourself. So you got to college and decided to prove yourself to the world.
In high school, you were one of 3 in your friend group who didn't get into National Honor Society. You had to watch all your friends get inducted in front of the whole school, and you cried silently in the auditorium because you felt stupid.
In high school, you had "friends" who shamed you for bad grades because a 4.0 was their standard and you didn't fit it.
In high school, you didn't sacrifice your mental health for your grades. In high school, when you got tired of doing homework or studying, you put it away and relaxed instead or went to bed.
When you got to college, you decided to prove yourself to the world. Your fall semester of freshman year you earned a 3.5 GPA. Adults praised you endlessly, and you never understood why, because in high school you were surrounded by people who naturally got a 3.5 or higher; you were made to think that a 3.5 or higher was easy to achieve and you were just too stupid to achieve it.
In college, that 3.5 did not come easy. It came from all-nighters, it came from crying every single day and calling your mom, it came from sleep-deprived mental breakdowns in the middle of class. It came from tearing yourself apart inside because you kept comparing yourself to your roommate because she was able to get a 4.0 which seemed to come to her with ease.
In college, you sacrifice your mental health to prove yourself to the world through your grades. You got a 3.2 GPA spring semester of freshman year and tore yourself apart over it because you felt like you didn't prove yourself that semester. You felt like no one was proud of you. Nobody had ever told you they were proud of you, so you took pride in your grades, and the 3.2 to you was nothing to be proud of.
In college, seeing a B on your transcript makes you cry. In college, you need to graduate at least Cum Laude to make up for not making National Honor Society in high school. In college, you wake up early to study before class, stay up late to study, and repeat. In college, B's aren't enough.
In college, you CONSTANTLY Google "College GPA Calculator" to check your GPA to see where you need to improve and how many A minuses you can get with a C in one class and still make Dean's List.
In college, your grades come before your mental health.
