When I hit that point in the semester when everything seems to be going wrong, a recurring dream plagues me without fail.

In the dream, I’m walking on a street briskly and trying to get to where I need to be. It feels like I’m about to do something big, like attend an important job interview or take an exam that I know that I’m prepared for. I feel happy, confident, and determined. I’m about to show the world what I can do and I know that I can do it.

All of a sudden, though, a vine begins to creep up my leg, trying to pull me down to the pavement. At first, I just kick it off and keep walking, but more vines appear, stronger, and creeping up both of my legs, finally pulling me down. Once I’m down, I feel the tears well up in my eyes and I start screaming for someone, anyone, to help me up and free me. The vines reach my throat, constricting until its gets harder and harder to breathe. My vision starts to fade and just as it’s about to go dark, I wake up.

I know why I have this dream. I know why it continues to haunt me even into college and I know why it scares me so much, how it translates so well to the reality around me.

I have always striven to be passionate about academics, extra-curricular activities, and be a well-rounded person. It’s an admirable goal, but when you come to a school like Carnegie Mellon, you see yourself surrounded by people who are just like you.

For me, I use the people around me to inspire me. They are people who are so genuinely into their academics that they inspire me to put more into my classes. They're people who are so into their clubs that I want to explore outside my comfort zone or put 20 times more into the organizations that I’m already in. In the same breath, being surrounded by these incredibly passionate people is frightening.

It’s not jealousy. I never envy the people around me because, to me, that just seems silly. We’re not the same person, so there’s no point in wanting to be them. It does, however, plant a tiny seed of worry in me every time when I see someone approaching something with such pure passion. Will I ever be as passionate as that? Will I ever be so genuinely into my clubs?

Will I ever be good enough?

Each seed planted in my subconscious grows into the vines that pull me down and trap me. While raising these questions does hurt me, I can’t deny how motivational and inspiring it is to see how passionate some people are. After all, nobody is intentionally trying to make me question myself, it’s just my automatic response to do so.

At first, I had no idea how to approach the problem. I obviously knew that it was unhealthy and hurting me, but I couldn’t just stop recognizing how passionate people are. So, I just stuffed the problem away and lived with it. I relished the times when those questions weren’t at the front of my mind, but knew that they still crept somewhere within my subconscious.

Strangely enough, my epiphany came while I was at the dentist’s office, talking to my dental assistant about where I went to college. When I told her that I went to Carnegie Mellon, her immediate response was to tell me how lucky I was that my parents had the ability to send me to such a good school.

I don’t think that I’m a terribly ungrateful person, but her saying that finally changed my perspective on Carnegie Mellon and the problems that I had with my own self-worth there. Instead of focusing on my feelings of lagging behind and what I didn’t have, I learned to focus on what I did have.

Instead of letting all of the passionate people of Carnegie Mellon force me to question myself, I should be grateful that I have the opportunity to be at a school like this. Instead of freaking out about an exam that I bombed, I should realize that, at the end of the day, it’s about learning and I should be grateful that I am getting a top-quality education.

I’ll admit, the solution to my problem is a bit lofty and indirect. However, as I have realized, it is 100 percent effective. Driven students tend to complicate life a lot. We are always looking at how we are falling behind, not striving to be the best and not succeeding. At the end of the day, though, we should all take a step back and, instead of looking at the negatives in our lives, focus on all of the privileges that we should be grateful for.