Under Pressure: The College Stress Test

How perfectionism and depression collide, leading to the ultimate crisis.

For students like me—all A’s, President’s List, recipient of multiple scholarships—the smallest rupture in our bubble of perfectionism can feel utterly catastrophic. My GPA is sitting at a 3.95. I have made all A’s for four years of year-round college—spring, summer, and fall semesters every year, giving myself no break to rest, to breathe. I’m set to graduate Summa Cum Laude in two short days. On paper, I embody academic success, right? But inside, I still guilt-trip myself over the one single grade on my transcript that doesn’t say “A”—the haunting C I made in College Algebra during my first year of college. Mind you, I was going through several obstacles outside of school: I was ending my toxic relationship, I was getting sicker—I would end up with three new surgeries in just a few short months. Yet I gave myself no grace at struggling with a class for the first time in my college career. School had always come natural to me, so when I wasn’t just automatically clicking with a new course topic, it felt life-shattering. As a perfectionist, that single grade detonated everything I had built my worth upon—not just in college, but in my entire lifetime. You see, I had grown up with drug-addict parents who seemed to forget they had willingly brought a child into this world and must raise her. I had to raise myself; every accomplishment I made went unnoticed. I was good at school from the very start, and as a result, I clung to my good grades as an identity, as a sign of my worthiness to be in this world. If everything else could be taken away from me (or never presented to me to begin with)—a sense of safety, the feeling of being part of a family, basic necessities like food and clothing and a safe place to sleep—regardless of everything I didn’t have, what I did have was my smarts. No one could take that away from me; it was mine and all mine. This survival tactic did me a lot of good; teachers loved me because I thrived and I truly cared. I received scholarships for my academic success; I was noticed. The downside to that, is that it further fueled the drive to keep being “at the top” academically, because that’s where I existed, that’s where I could be seen.

Perfectionism is often praised as ambition, drive, discipline. It’s rewarded with scholarships, recognition from Congress, honors cords at graduation, quiet admiration, and titles like “Summa Cum Laude, President’s List Scholar” as I walk across the stage… But when perfectionism collides with things like depression and PTSD from a life filled with trauma, the result may not always be motivation—sometimes it leads to implosion. According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), perfectionistic behavior can be strongly linked to psychological distress. Their 2022 research explains how “feelings of worthlessness and harsh self-criticism associated with failing to live up to one’s expectations lead to poorer adjustment and negative emotional states,” driven by relentless self-evaluation, fixation on perceived “failure,” and chronic dissatisfaction. The study also notes that perfectionism doesn’t merely cause stress—it generates this sort of feedback loop where pressure worsens mental health, and declining mental health, in turn, intensifies the perfectionism. It’s a vicious cycle, to say the least.

Given all that I’ve endured as a child, teen, and now adult, achievement was more than just that—it was a safety net. It was where I survived; it meant, that in a world that had never seemed to go right for me (or favor my well-being), I was doing something right where everything else felt utterly out of my control. Grades were not just feedback for me; they were proof that I was worth something to this world. So when that proof cracked, just once, the meaning that I had so desperately attached to it collapsed right alongside it.

When people think about suicidal ideation, they think “dramatic,” “impulsive,” things of that nature. For me, it was quiet—on the outside, at least. Inside, my brain was screaming for help. I was exhausted. I didn’t have the desire to die, per se… but I did have the desire for the crippling pressure I had placed upon myself to just stop for a little while; for the noise in my head to finally fall silent for once. What is most terrifying to consider while looking back on that time in my life, is how logical it really seemed to feel in that moment of darkness. But sometimes, that’s what perfectionism does: it convinces you that your worst thoughts are merely reasonable conclusions, that one singular flaw ruins your entire structure of being. One imperfection is the contaminate of everything you are. The hardest part of it all, is that no one else can see this turmoil bubbling over inside of you. Professors still see a thriving student who can write like no tomorrow; fellow students see you continue to make good grades and get good scholarships and recognition. What no one else sees or hears is the way that your brain just never stops going.

As I mentioned already, the academic culture surrounding perfectionism only feeds this crippling silence within. We admire and reward students for being resilient, for pushing harder, for sleeping less and sacrificing more. It’s as though burnout is some rite of passage instead of a cry for help. We preach about balance between work, school, and home life, yet we expect and demand more, leading to imbalance. The danger here is how perfectionists like myself isolate. We don’t ask for help because we’re supposed to be the example. We don’t (and can’t) admit weakness, because weakness threatens the entire structure we are standing on and have built for ourselves. When we finally realize we are drowning, we have already taught everyone around us that we don’t need saving.

The NIH’s research showed how perfectionists engage in rigorous self-evaluation and hyper-focus on negative outcomes, which leads to “low satisfaction” and deteriorating emotional well-being. That resonates very deeply for me, as someone who struggled enough overcoming childhood trauma/neglect/abuse and was never taught how to have a positive self-image or strong sense-of-self. For me, every academic achievement I have made in the past four years has raised the bar for the next thing I need to achieve. The bar continues to climb, and I never give myself the grace to stop and take a breather. I’ve just become more exhausted in the process.

As sad as it is to admit, that single subpar grade I made in my first year of college was a major catalyst in my own mental downfall at the time. I was going through real life problems, too—I had been cheated on, I felt betrayed, I was getting sicker and needing multiple surgeries to “fix” me… all of these things, a few years later, are history to me. I’ve gotten past them. But that grade? Nope, it still haunts me. I see it every time I look at my transcripts and see that 3.95 GPA which should be a 4.0. It sounds ridiculous, huh? I can recognize that. But for someone whose identity has been built almost entirely on a foundation of my intelligence, it felt like a complete unraveling of who I thought I was or could be. What I’m still trying to teach myself to this day, two days before graduation with my bachelor’s degree, is that rest is not failure, and imperfection is not death. I have not stopped being a perfectionist by any means. But I am learning, albeit slowly and impatiently, to challenge this narrative that writes me off as only being valuable based on how good my grades (or accomplishments in general) are. Numbers do not measure endurance, perseverance, trauma, displacement, illness, grief, or my survival through it all.