I Planned My Way to Burnout

I used to plan everything. Color-coded calendars, study schedules mapped out weeks in advance, backup plans for my backup plans. I thought this made me bulletproof. Then junior year hit and I couldn't get out of bed for three days straight. My perfect system had turned me into a robot who forgot how to think without a checklist. The breaking point was sitting in organic chemistry, staring at a problem I'd studied for hours, and realizing I'd memorized the steps but had no idea what I was actually doing. I'd planned myself into academic paralysis. Now I'm learning to improvise. Not the fun kind—the desperate kind where you have to rebuild your entire approach to learning because your old one nearly broke you. Turns out life doesn't follow study guides. Neither does recovery. I'm still figuring out how to trust my instincts after years of only trusting my planner. Some days I feel like I'm free-falling. Other days, I remember what it's like to actually understand something instead of just performing understanding. The hardest part isn't the uncertainty. It's forgiving myself for thinking I could control everything in the first place. #Education #AcademicBurnout #PerfectionismStruggles