Falling off

I haven't been proud of myself in 2 years

In 9th grade I was just a pedestrian strolling on the streets, looking up at the skyscrapers and walls and thinking somewhat sadly of how I wished I could be there. In the following years I did manage to climb one, and became so obsessed with the joy of heights that I refused to come back down, even after high school ended. I chose a wall and walked along it, heading toward thick fog but not caring because at least it was above ground. At least people could see me.

At first, this elevated path seemed somewhat like a walk in the park — the incline was flat or maybe even slightly downward sloped. People believed I had potential because they remembered the skyscraper that I had climbed before. They watched me and smiled, anticipating what taller thing I would climb next. I watched myself, wondering the same. Wondering when I would next have a vocation to pursue something; when I would next fall in love with something. I smiled back and danced leisurely on the wall, waiting for a helicopter to scoop me up and deliver me right to the next level higher. Upperclassmen offered me a lot of support as a freshman, swooping in to provide comfort if anything stressed me out, and I felt like I could not be more loved than this.

I truly believed that I would find a vocation in a couple of months. That I would run full-speed in a direction like I had before, and climb another skyscraper that was even higher than the previous one. People waited for the advertisement break to end and for the next show to start, and I glanced at my watch nervously.

But it never did.

Freshman year was okay — I performed decently on things like the Putnam and classes, but not well enough to cause an upward trend. Just barely well enough to continue on level ground and not fall off the wall. A few times I felt like I was losing my balance, but barely managed to stabilize myself. I tried to keep smiling and hide my weakness, but over time it turned painful, more like a grimace. I felt like I was developing and maturing soft-skills-wise, but not achieving quantifiable things that the people watching me would acknowledge.

The obligation to impress people became the bane of my existence.

Over time, the elevated path grew steeper and steeper — every step required more effort to counteract gravity. Even if I stood perfectly still, the ground would move forward beneath me like a conveyor belt; time ticking against my desire. In the distance there was a fork, with one pathway labeled quant and another AI labs and another research publications and another entrepreneurship, but with a slippery slope leading to each. I felt the audience growing impatient for me to pick one, put everything forward, and surmount it. I was already a sophomore in college; pretty much everyone else who I had seen in the skyscrapers and on the wall with me was already sprinting forward with a destination in mind.

I waited for something to just spontaneously happen. For luck to just spontaneously save me, like it had many times in high school. But the difference was that I didn’t feel love for any of the aforementioned pathways like I had for math olympiads. I pushed myself as hard as I could onto the research path, taking so many classes that I didn’t have time to understand all of them. Thinking that if I shoved something in my face constantly then I would fall in love with it. But it backfired, and I ended up enjoying pure math less than I had in freshman year, just because of how little I understood it. As a backup option I tried pushing myself into quant a little bit, and somehow thought I could get somewhere by just running toward that slippery incline completely unprepared. Obviously, this didn’t work either, and I bounced right off of it. I lay sprawled on the ground of the wall, holding on as tightly as I could, feeling like I had made zero progress on securing a future in the whole past year.

My biggest fear was falling off the wall.

Now, gravity began to play the role of devil’s advocate (or maybe angel’s advocate). Maybe the reason why you’re not succeeding at these things like research and quant is because you aren’t built for them in the first place. Maybe you shouldn’t force yourself to do things that you don’t actually love. Open your mind and stop looking so high up. Remember that there are things lower down, too. Maybe those things would fit you better and make you happier.

Gravity had always played the role of devil’s advocate. After failing at anything, I’ve always comforted myself by thinking that this was how it was meant to be. That even if it seems like tripping at first glance, it’s an important step in the grand scheme of things that’s there for a reason. And I can basically always come up with a reason for why it’s good that something happened — I learned this or that from it, or it allowed me to do such-and-such other thing.

I couldn’t let these thoughts take me down. I couldn’t lose the love and appreciation of everyone watching me, because I absolutely needed it for my mental sanity (or did I?) Peaking in high school, and having a downward trajectory after that, was surely the worst possible thing that could happen to me(...?) I didn’t want the audience to see me as just someone who “fell off”. But as I tripped again and again, I felt people giving up on me; less and less people watching me from below. They could tell that something was wrong with me. And that could not be more accurate. Over time my self-confidence dropped lower and lower, as the hope of ever climbing as high as I had in high school again seemed to diminish. A dark cloud hung over me almost constantly. I apologized over and over again to my audience, and could barely smile at them anymore.

Busying myself with the Caltech Math Meet in January actually served as a distraction from my life as a ruined performer. Thinking about organizing the competition 24/7 left me no time to ruminate on the fact that I was nowhere near surmounting one of the slopes that loomed in front of me. Helping out with the Caltech Math Circle every week also accomplished this. It’s like a safe haven where I can be genuinely happy helping children with math, without a thought toward my future or my classes. The children don’t ask me what my future plans are. They don’t expect me to achieve anything. They just want to understand math problems, and I’m happy to explain them.

No longer a freshman, I’m not a baby anymore, so there isn’t as much upperclassman support to make sure I’m okay — I’m sort of supposed to find my way myself and also be a role model for the current freshmen. But I do have a support system of a few close friends, who appreciate me for who I am as a person rather than for my concrete skills and knowledge. When talking to them, I can finally push the dark cloud aside. They acknowledge my personal and emotional growth during college, even if I haven’t really gone anywhere career-wise. I kind of wish everyone could see me for that, but that’s just not how the world works — it takes way more than just being a good person to climb high.

Putnam this year leaves me hanging onto the wall by just a few fingers. I’m definitely declining academically at this point; you can see it in my scores alone. For the first time, I cry in front of my audience (which is really dwindling at this point). Gravity is screaming do it, do it. You know you have to.

I’m questioning why I had been so relaxed during freshman year… why I somehow thought I could just coast along and wait for opportunities to come to me… why I somehow thought the four pathways onward were just continuations of what I had done before, when in reality they were completely new terrain that required completely new strategies to surmount… why I had pushed myself so hard into higher math that I hadn’t left myself time to actually understand or appreciate it…

The way forward won’t just be a walk in the park; a simple stroll along this wall. It will require as much effort as I had put forth in 9th grade: entire days dedicated to growing my skill set, with no room for ego because I must get used to being surrounded by the unknown. If in 9th grade I was standing on the ground looking up at the skyscrapers and the walls, and I’m pretty much in the exact same situation right now, should I not be on the ground right now? Where there is no one watching me — no pressure to match others’ expectations — but space to achieve however much or little as I want? It’s not the learning that pains me, but the feeling that I have to uphold my reputation of being a high-performing individual.

I jump.

I find myself among the crowd again. Anonymous again. It still hurts to think about what I once was and what I could have been, and to think about the people who I was friends with long ago, once talked to, who have sped off into the distance and will now just be faces I gaze up at. But I think this is where I belong. High school olympiads made me believe that I could be among the best, and made me obsessed with the joy of heights, but this was really like poison because it’s unsustainable to be constantly among the best. The real world is so big and will always contain countless people better than you. Although it may be possible to be among the best in the small world of math olympiads, this is not true in the real world (unless you’re really, really incredible).

The life of a performer is unsustainable. You can’t possibly keep the audience happy all the time while being happy yourself. You can’t pursue the things that will look the best to other people, while also always working on things that you truly love. You’ll force yourself in the direction that your audience wants, and sometimes fail, and diminish your self-worth. You’ll compare yourself now to yourself at your highest point in the audience’s eyes, and not be proud of yourself for 2 years. Everyone on that performative wall — that platform for the rest of the world to see and admire — needs to jump at some point.

Maybe now that I don’t have to follow the trajectory which will look the best to other people, the most upward-facing, I can find my vocation. It might not be one that is commonly seen as very prestigious. It might not fit cleanly into one of the four categories that I saw from on the wall. Maybe now I can be more attentive to what actually brings me joy, such as helping out with the Math Circle, and that will help me find my way. I will try to adopt Vincent’s mindset of finding what feels authentic and reasonable to yourself, and doing a good job on it. I most definitely won’t be among the best at something, but that’s okay because I don’t need to make an audience happy. I know that my friends who appreciate me for who I am will be there for me, even if an audience isn’t.

You don’t need a thousand people to love you like an audience loves their performer. You just need a few people to genuinely love you.

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This post was somewhat inspired by "Breaking up with myself".