Two months ago, I had been accepted into an internship and, a week or so later, they emailed me saying that they "actually decided to go with someone who had already graduated college. Sorry."

At first, I was angry. I had turned down other opportunities because I assumed that I would have this one, and I was left scrambling to fill my summer. Next, I became overwhelmed with a profound sense of anxiety. Truth be told, I even had a panic attack. Why?

As Millennials, we are reared from age 0 to go through three distinct developmental milestones: childhood (and elementary/middle school), adolescence (where we somehow navigate high school and college), and adulthood, where we are expected to have/get a career, a family, and a normative life complete with a picket fence. Now, I'm not saying that this is the path for all people. It isn't, and that's fine. However, it is still the path that our westernized culture dictates as "successful."

With that in mind, I panicked because I was worried about my non-evident success. I am surrounded by people who are involved in so many extracurriculars that I don't know how they sleep, maintain 4.0-averages, and peers who have scored outlandishly awesome internships this summer. When my internship was rescinded in favor of another candidate, I saw my life flash before my eyes -- it dramatically ended in me serving french fries and saying, "Welcome to McDonald's" as a 40 year old. Like I said, it's dramatic.

I was so worried about not having an internship to slap on my resume that I became consumed with sadness and anxiety. I immediately thought of not being able to get a job post-college, not being successful, and not being happy. All because of one internship.

This got me thinking about the pressure we put on ourselves to all but cure cancer in order to "find success" and "be happy." We work ourselves to the bone, and it's considered "normal college behavior" to be high-strung and unhealthily exhausted. We see it, almost, as a term of endearment. For some reason, we see an overly-exhaustive workload as a sign of success. Oh, that person just pulled two all-nighters and has three jobs. I wish I could do that. They must have their life together.

Looking back, I realize that I've never gone through a period of time in college without having a job of some sort. Sometimes I'd have multiple. I think my record was five jobs, two majors, a minor, a sorority, and a research group. People would look at my schedule and say, "Oh my gosh. You are going to be so successful. I have no idea how you do it."

Truth be told, I don't know how I did it either. I developed extreme anxiety, a horrible sleep schedule, and little-to-no free time. When my friends would go out and have fun, I'd stay in my dorm and do homework. When my buddies would invite me to hang out, I was tucked in a nook somewhere trying to get work done. I was miserable.

That's when it happened -- I broke. I snapped. I couldn't handle it all. My grades slipped, my exhaustion caught up with me, and I became constantly sick. After two years of exhausting myself to the point of incoherence, I was finally done. That's around the time that I got the email from the internship and I realized something: I need to actually have fun.

I quit all of my jobs but two: Odyssey and yoga instructing. I started actually seeing my friends. I started laughing, smiling, and loving life more than I had since I came to college. I saw pictures that friends were posting on Facebook of me and instead of looking tired and haggard like I usually did, I looked genuinely happy.

Since then, I've decided to take a lesson from John Lennon:

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

If we define success by how many jobs we have, how stressed out we are, and how little sleep we get, then we will never truly be happy. Stress, all-consuming projects, and jobs might be a recipe for success on paper, but it will eventually hurt you. Take a cue from John Lennon and remember that the number of jobs and amount of stress you have does not dictate your success -- how you feel waking up in the morning and going to bed at night does. Be happy, and in that you'll always find true success.