The Weight of Excellence

Picture the perfect student.

You probably already have someone in mind. That one person who seems to glide through everything with effortless ease, while you're left gasping for air, wondering how they make it look so natural.

Here's what I want you to consider: that image was never really about them. It's about a story you've been telling yourself — that excellence is something people either have or don't. That the top 1% is a private club, and the invitation just never came for you.

It's not true. And once you see that, everything changes.

For me, the perfect student was never a classmate. It was my father.

He's a PhD-holding professor who has dedicated his life to academia. I grew up on a steady diet of stories from my mom about how he was always first in his class, always the best, always at the top. Excellence wasn't something I observed from a distance in my house. It lived there.

I'm grateful for that. Genuinely. But gratitude and pressure aren't mutually exclusive. When you grow up surrounded by that much excellence, there's quite a heavy weight that settles on your shoulders.

So there have been many points in my life as a student where I've been caught staring point-blank at my page, completely paralysed. Anxious. Wondering:

What is the point of all this? Is this what I really want? Who am I doing this for?

This is Academic Vertigo — that mid-semester moment where the ground shifts beneath you and you lose sight of why you started. The work is still there. The deadlines are still there. But the reason has gone blurry.

I'm sure you know the feeling. It can be easy to lose yourself in your studies. Especially if you care. Especially because you care.

For a long time, I didn't even stop to ask the question. I was just running because my parents pointed toward a finish line.

There's no shame in starting that way. But eventually, I reached a point of sudden clarity: I am doing this for myself.

These grades aren't a tribute to my father's career. They aren't a way to maintain a family legacy. They aren't even for my parents. They are simply the tools I need to build the life I want.

The moment I found that, something shifted. The work didn't get easier — but it got lighter. Because I finally understood what it was for.

If you're struggling to find the motivation to open a textbook tonight, it might be because you're running toward a finish line that someone else drew for you.

To move through Academic Vertigo, you need to reclaim your own direction. That's what it actually means to be an A* student — not perfect grades, not effortless ease, but a clear sense of where you're going and the willingness to keep moving toward it.

Here's where to start.

Step 1 — Identify Your North Star

What do you want at the finish line of your academic life? What does an ideal day look like when you've graduated? What do you want to contribute to the world, and how do the grades you're getting right now connect to that?

Write it down, even if it's rough. Even a blurry North Star is better than none — because it gives you something to orient toward when the fog rolls in.

Step 2 — Choose One Gear Upgrade This Week

A North Star is the why. A gear upgrade is the how — one small, concrete change you make this week that brings you slightly closer to it. Not a full system overhaul. Not a new productivity app. One thing. Maybe it's reading one extra chapter before you feel like it. Maybe it's moving your phone to another room while you study. Maybe it's sitting down with a past paper on the topic you've been avoiding.

The A* student isn't the one who does everything perfectly. They're the one who keeps making small upgrades, week after week, until the momentum becomes its own kind of fuel.

The students who seem to glide through everything weren't born that way. They just started somewhere, found something to move toward, and kept going.

My father set a bar that once felt impossibly high. These days, I'm not trying to reach his bar. I'm building my own — and that's made all the difference.

Your starting point is not your ceiling. You don't need everything figured out. You just need a North Star, however blurry, and one gear upgrade this week.

That's the whole compass.