There are quite a few pop culture things in this world that I absolutely love. If you get me started on the movie "Gattaca" or anything Lin-Manuel Miranda has ever written, I will not shut up until I’ve sung it's praises -- or in the case of Lin-Manuel Miranda's musicals, actually sung the entire thing. But growing up there was nothing I loved watching more than the television show "Gilmore Girls"

Gilmore Girls ran for seven seasons on the CW, and followed the lives of Lorelai Gilmore and her daughter Rory. After getting pregnant with Rory at 16, Lorelei ran away from her wealthy family and worked her way up to owning a kitschy inn. The show follows her adventures raising Rory, now 16 herself, in the quirky Connecticut town of Stars Hollow.

I used to watch GG (yeah, I use an acronym because I am unbelievably cool) with my own mom all the time, and may have idolized Rory a little too hard. She got straight As, read more books than anyone else in her town, got into Yale, was subject to an endless amount of gorgeous boys chasing her, and never seemed to have a bad hair day- she was everything I wanted to grow up to be. And in many ways, on the surface, I succeeded.

I read every book in the public library -- occasionally losing them to the elements or on the school bus and becoming a wanted criminal in the eyes of the local librarians -- I tried hard to excel in school and to be an exemplary daughter, sister and friend. I even experimented with fringe bangs as a 9th grader, something I did not pull off nearly as well as Alexis Bledel.

Crazy eyes. In my defense, I had just been cut from a high school production of Twelve Angry Men and was in a state.

But want to know something they don’t tell you when you’re curled up watching Netflix? Trying to be the prefect girl, trying to be Rory Gilmore, is exhausting. Because Rory Gilmore doesn’t exist. I don’t just mean that in the obvious, oh-course-Halle-she’s-a-fictional-character sense. No one girl has that charmed a life!

School is hard work and sometimes getting Cs on papers you were proud of. Boys like Jess Marino usually don’t have a heart of gold - they’re just jerks, and rarely as cute as Milo Ventimiglia. And no one’s hair curls frizz-free like that without divine intervention and fourteen CW-hired hairdressers.

And that's okay. Real girls can do something Rory Gilmore never could: Take failure. In Gilmore Girls, facing a singular bit of criticism of her writing, Rory dropped out of college and stole a boat. When she wanted a car or a trip to Europe or a goddamn New York City apartment, her rich grandparents or father bought it for her. Rory never put as much work into something as you put into your chemical engineering thesis, or had a messy, complicated break up like you did with someone you thought you were going to marry. She certainly never rocked the knotted, greasy ponytail and worked two summer jobs to afford her tuition for next year. I realized I'd failed and been knocked over and disappointed more times than Rory had ordered a cup of coffee -- and those experiences had only made me work harder and get better.

Keeping that in mind is what saved me, the terminally single, B-student, from spiraling into a pit of despair and self loathing. And finally learning how to best style my bangs.

she's beauty, she's grace, she hasn't washed that shirt in a week.

So this is a message to all my fellow uptight wannabe overachievers -- you’ll never be Rory Gilmore. You are

so much stronger than her.