The Triple Crown: composed of the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes, this trophy has only been awarded to 12 horses with the heart to win all three of these races since its commencement in 1950. These are the winners:

Sir Barton (1919), Gallant Fox (1930), Omaha (1935), War Admiral (1937), Whirlaway (1941), Count Fleet (1943), Assault (1946), Citation (1948), Secretariat (1973), Seattle Slew (1977), Affirmed (1978), and American Pharoah (2015).

Now let me explain to you why these 12 horses matter, and bare with me while we get there, all of you non-horse people out there.

Junior year of high school—where in the midst of all the hormone crazed kids, some of us managed to dream big. We set our sights on elite universities. We dug deep, studied hard, extracurricular-ed harder, and picked up leadership positions as if they were Pokemon and we were all playing Pokemon Go. The only difference was that the stakes were much higher then.

The summer going into junior year, for my AP Language class, I read a book that has now come to change the way I see my world: The Overachievers by Alexandra Robbins. At the time, the book made me feel pretty “megh” about whether or not I was pushing myself too hard. At the time, I told myself I was pulling five hours of sleep or less a night because that’s just what it took to be the best, and if you weren’t trying to be the best, then what really is the point of trying at all?

Looking back, I wish Robbins would have shown me just how detrimental the overachiever lifestyle can be during the college years. Of course, hair was lost from excessive amounts of stress, that I expected, but hair grows back. What doesn’t grow back is your ability to overachieve once you’ve achieve what you been, well, trying to achieve, and for me, and a lot of other college students no doubt, what I was trying to achieve was a particular college. For me, the University of Chicago.

My prime—junior year—built up my hardy Common App, putting me in the running to even consider applying to such an elite institution. Junior year alone I took six AP tests. In total, I graduated with a solid nine AP exams under my college-ready-belt. It didn’t matter that the University wouldn’t accept my credits. The point was that I could jump through their flaming hoops without getting burned (because there was still a chance for that later on).

After spending a good year and a half striving and not sleeping over a single goal, I applied early and got in. As far as I’m concerned, that’s where my story ends. I had set my goal so high and yet so low because once I achieved it, I didn’t know where that left me, and I was faced with only more hoops to hop through. In a sense, I’d won the Kentucky Derby, but I still had the Preakness and Belmont Stakes.

So why wasn’t getting into college enough? Because “C’s get degrees” simply doesn’t cut it for veteran overachievers like myself. The mantra instead seems to go, “good grades get good internship, and good internships get good grad schools, and good grad schools get good jobs, and good jobs get good paychecks, which can then pay off allllll of that." And then what? Are we satisfied then? In ten years, will we be satisfied with all this work we’ve been putting in since junior year of high school?

Racehorses also have a prime of ten years just like us. Coincidence? I think not. The lucky ones get turned out to the pastures in retirement, but not all of them, a good amount of them actually, are not so lucky.

While some overachievers still believe that achieving all it takes to get that paycheck at end of a decade is possible if they work a little harder and for a little longer, I find myself falling short because of the old injuries of junior year when I pushed myself just a bit too hard and a bit too long.

Racehorses, even if they have treatable injuries are shot on the track if their owners don’t think they are worth the trouble in an attempt to save themselves a bit money, considering it money wasted on what could have been a real winner but more money saved on what could have been an expensive rehab. In the overachiever’s case, being a burnout tends to mean that this is you—out of the race to be the best and a waste of the expensive education your parents have paid for, and once you’re behind, the question comes if you’ll ever really be able to catch up.

If you haven’t caught up with this parallel I’ve been putting down, here it is loud and clear: we are racehorses.

We’re racehorse in an age old system, telling us to be the best, but if we were honest with ourselves, none of us will ever be the best because the terms and conditions of this race are just as long as the Apple updates on our iPhones. As racehorses, we have to get to the top of that decade long hill to get to the greener pastures past the high school competition, college grade race, internship contest, grad school game, and job market home stretch.

We’re running a triple crown, only with five races instead of three, and not all of us can make it if only 12 horses since 1919 have won—some of us will have to settle for second and the rest behind even that and some of us will have to burnout somewhere along the line.