Me and My Motivations

I want to write this post as someone who feels constantly on the edge of burnout and only recently repositioned herself.

Throughout college, I had an unwavering sense of self-purpose that I would pursue justice as a scholar. And I believed I was self-aware enough to avoid the pitfalls of ego, because I understood my privileged circumstances and I was genuinely motivated by my ideals. My identity was built on this vision of what my role is in the world.

But since entering grad school, this idealistic bubble of my self-image has busted. Among all kinds of pressures, I feel most defeated by the realization that I’m surrounded by extraordinarily talented people who outperform me, and the path I always imagined for myself turns out to be made up of endless selection processes in which I compete with them. My anxiety drives me to apply meritocratic standards to myself and always feel that I fall short.

This sense of defeat has been crushing, and I’ve been trying to understand where it comes from. I realize now that I had been driven largely by fear. I now see that I subconsciously internalized a social Darwinist worldview from my upbringing that I thought I had consciously resisted. This mindset manifested as a need to see myself and be seen by others as part of an academic elite contributing to my ideals from a position of distinction. Because my self-worth became tied to maintaining this image, whenever I’m challenged, I experience it as shameful incompetence.

This realization has pushed me to reconsider how I understand my identity and my contribution to society. Ultimately, I’m learning to reconcile two powerful, competing motivations: my original, enduring commitment to knowledge and justice, and the more recent, fear-based drive for academic excellence. The goal is to distangle them and to think beyond institutional validation. The most therapeutic and pragmatic step has been to re-evaluate my relationship with the idea of being “ordinary”, and ask myself, how can I make an impact outside academic settings.

So this is a post of my existential rambling, and it feels uncomfortably vulnerable to put these reflections on public record. But I want to do this to help de-stigmatize these feelings which are essentially part of a transformative period of my life. By sharing it, I hope to connect with others who might be navigating a similar journey.