In my time spent procrastinating on the internet, there’s a joke I often come across and always find worthy of a bit of a grin. It tends to be in the form of a “starter pack” meme--that is, a collection of images and phrases with a unifying title; in this case, something along the lines of “Honors Student Who Realized In High School That They’re Actually Average Starter Pack.” There are a lot of these being shared on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, and they all have a pretty similar collection of images: antidepressants, cigarettes, alcohol, Adderall, self-harm, social isolation, sinking grades.

I laugh at these because I can relate to them. So can the thousands and thousands of people sharing them.

Yikes.

Sure, a lot of us are pretty cynical, but the fact that the internet is filled with jokes about the unstable health of “above average” kids is really no laughing matter. There’s a trend here worth examining, and a question worth asking: why do the so-called “gifted” kids so often end up in cycles of severe mental illness, failing performance, and substance abuse?

There’s a lot of complexity to answering such a question, but the core truth is this: education is a competition. And it should not be that way.

For as long as I can remember, I haven’t gone to school to learn. I’ve gone to win. More often than not, I approach an assignment with little regard for what I can actually get out of it; I’m too focused on scoring the best grade that I can, even if that means boxing myself in to fit the shape of the Rubric in my homework folder. When I go in to take a test, retention is the last thing I’m concerned with: it’s all about holding things in my short-term memory just long enough to grab that A.

This isn’t just because I’m naturally competitive. It’s because this is who I am. The entirety of my self-worth is measured against my academic performance. From as early as first grade, I was considered “above average.” But it isn’t enough to be above average once. When you excel, that becomes your new standard. I may not have been the funniest, friendliest, most athletic, or best-looking teenager in middle school, but I was one of the smartest. And, as time went on, that became harder and harder to maintain.

On the first standardized test I ever took, I scored in the 99th percentile across the board. A few years later, I took another test, and in one of the categories, I was in the 86th percentile instead.

I was devastated.

And maybe, looking back, that’s a little comedic. But it was one of the first times in my life that I remember, like a gut-punch, feeling like I had failed.

There are a couple of issues to examine within this. One of them is the troubling fact that I thought 86th percentile was not enough for me to be impressive. There are myriad reasons for this: my parents, the school environment, the talent of my friends, my own insecurity.

But the second problem is even more concerning. These were percentile scores, not percentages--meaning that my performance on the test itself was hardly a factor. What determined my score was how I did in comparison to students across the country. In order to feel that I had done sufficiently well, I would have had to do better than other hardworking students. I could not allow myself to feel victorious until I came out on the absolute top. Better than 86% of kids my age? Pathetic. I had to be the absolute best. And so did all of the other kids raised to believe that they were “above and beyond.”

It doesn’t take an honors student to detect the mathematical impossibility in this equation.

Percentile scores are perhaps the area in which this problem is most evident, but it permeates every aspect of education: selection for honors programs, awarding of scholarships, admission to colleges, even curved test grades. We are operating within a system in which we have to win, win, win--and once we stop winning, we will never be in that position again. My GPA in high school was above a 3.8, and I barely fell within the top 25% of my class due to the abundance of students with 4.0s. As soon as you slip up once--earn one B--you’re subpar. You can’t get that back. Combine that chronic sense of failure with our societal epidemic of depression, and you’re headed straight down a spiraling road towards substance abuse, self-harm, and even suicide attempts. Among my “above average” friends, it’s abnormal not to have a degree of experience with at least two of these three things.

And remember: this isn’t just me, or my friends, or Mount Holyoke College. This is thousands--if not millions--of teenagers and young adults across and beyond the country.

Perhaps the saddest part of this all is how it makes education itself into a monster. I was a “gifted kid” in the first place because I was eager to learn. Knowledge was one of the coolest things in the world to my pigtailed, six-year-old self. Now, it’s one of the most terrifying. Any absorption of information, even pleasure reading, turns into a contest with myself: I freeze up, sweat, twitch, frantically count the pages remaining until I can brag that I finished a whole novel in one day. It’s a far cry from the times when I would sneak a flashlight under my covers to devour another chapter of Nancy Drew for the simple reason of itching to know what would happen next.

I deserve to love learning again. So does every other student across the world, whether or not they are--or ever have been--“gifted.” We need to stop being pitted against each other. Cultural capitalism needs to end. Everyone can be smart. Everyone can learn. Education should not be a competition.