High school was an exhausting four-year marathon. I was consumed with AP classes, the PSAT, SAT, SAT II’s, ACT, and AP exams, and meaningless resume-boosting extracurriculars. I was tired and dull-eyed and couldn’t be bothered to wear anything but jeans and the sweatshirts I had gotten from various academic events. For all four years of high school, there was no free time, no boyfriend, no parties, and nearly no fun. There was no time for anything but studying seven days a week, twenty hours a day. My formative adolescent years consisted of coping with constant stress and anxiety.

This was the norm at my competitive Southern California high school. No one got any sleep. No one dated. No one seemed to enjoy learning. Parties were almost unheard of. Conversations consisted of complaining about being stressed or tired. We found humor in comparing how little sleep we’d gotten– the average amount of sleep was four or five hours per night with frequent all-nighters.

We were all desperately trying to get into a “good” college. For my particular high school, that was understood to be certain University of California schools–Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Davis–and private schools like NYU, Carnegie Mellon, Brown, University of Southern California, Dartmouth, and Vanderbilt. However, even “lower-tier” schools, such as state schools, were known to be increasingly selective and horror stories of well-qualified students with high grades and test scores getting rejected were widely-circulated. Nowadays, the “ideal college application” is shrouded in an impenetrable mist, but rumors and stories spread about particular schools’ expectations for GPAs and test scores. No one really knows what they need to do, except that the students who do get in all seem to have ultra-high GPAs and test scores and quirky, stand-out extracurriculars. As a result, students try everything–fencing, archery, dancing for the elderly, taking all AP classes, hiring multiple tutors and college counselors–to create an attractive application.

Those removed from this college frenzy might ask why students “put themselves” through all that just to get into colleges. People may say that nothing can be that important. Now I realize that is true. But since we were pre-schoolers, our communities have told us that top universities are the path to success and happiness for both our selves and our future families. And when everyone else around you is fighting and competing to get into the best schools, you feel that you better do the same or be left behind. It is a strange thing. My peers and I are blessed to come from the growing population of middle and upper-class Americans where college is not just an option, but an expectation that is taken for granted. It has been the unquestioned goal of our lives since we started preschool. Yet, too much of any good thing is unhealthy.

Now I realize that it wasn’t worth it. Even though all of that work got me to University of California at Berkeley, I would rather be at a “lesser” school if it meant that I could have enjoyed my teen years. And now that I have met so many more people, I realize that there are so many other ways to be successful, that don’t involve selling your young soul to academics. If you look around, there are many successful people who did not go to elite–or even mid-tier universities. Even if they did go to elite universities, they did not spread themselves so thin with excessively rigorous course loads and extracurriculars in high school. Instead, they took advantage of any opportunities and resources that came their way and followed their passions and interests to fields that they genuinely enjoyed–and thus succeeded and stood-out. I believe that it is those “soft skills”–which are developed outside of the library–that guarantee success more than any A-grade or university-name.

I realize all of this now because of how happy and healthy I now am living a more balanced life. I am finally living life. The spectre of college admissions no longer clouds my vision and I am free to live life just to live it. Much of this change in perspective is because I have less school work and more freetime at UC Berkeley than in high school, which shows how ridiculous high school was. But also, I’ve rethought my priorities after realizing that I simply cannot go on with my previous lifestyle. Now, the purpose of my life is to be happy and healthy first and foremost, and to learn about the world through education and adventure so that I can be effective in helping others in my career. This is very different from living just to pass a test, get an A in a class, or join another extracurricular with the goal of getting into college and achieving some vague success. Surprisingly, making time for my social life, sleep, and fun and adventures has actually made me a much better student and more successful person in general. I am more productive and efficient and find it easier to get good grades. I am more emotionally and mentally-developed. I am able to balance a few “resume-boosting” extracurriculars because they are interesting and meaningful to me. Ironically, these things that I most enjoy doing–chair member of a ballet club, volunteer medic at local concerts, and rock climber and skateboarder–are the things that look most interesting and intriguing on my resume. Now that my mind is free, I have so much more mind power to be better at all that I do.

Basically what I am saying is, getting into a “good” college is not worth wasting away the valuable years of your life. Yes, students should work hard in school and take classes that challenge them, and yes it is unavoidable and even important to stress about classes and college sometimes–but not to the extreme extent that so many students do nowadays. Once you start overloading your schedule with hard classes, meaningless extracurriculars, and lose time for sleeping, socializing, and non-academic learning and exploration, you do yourself, your future, and your chances at success a disservice. Because if you focus all your time, energy, and emotions on one thing, you will enter the real world socially and emotionally developed, ridden with mental and physical health issues, and lacking the self-awareness that young people need time to find during their adolescent years.

I am writing this at my hometown’s local Starbucks next to high schoolers who look lost and exhausted just as I did. They are nervously picking at rashes on their faces, rubbing at dark circles under their eyes, and some have even laid their heads down on their books. The college admissions frenzy is a grueling process that an increasing number of American students are facing as the American population grows and American universities become more selective. I love my university and am so grateful that all my hardwork led me here, but there are so many other ways to happiness and success.