From a very young age, your parents began to build you up to do your best. They want you to succeed and to always try your best no matter what you're doing. Of course they mean well, but what happens when this encouragement becomes toxic? What happens when you become the best, but then suddenly fall short of average? It can be a hard fall, but it's not an uncommon one for a lot of college students.

Throughout my entire K-12 education, I was always on honor roll. Once I reached high school, the small "HH" at the bottom of my report card indicating high honors lost its real meaning; it simply felt as normal as seeing my name at the top. While there was always a sense of satisfaction seeing that token of appreciation at the end of every term, the glory becomes very static and flaccid. Where do you go from there? Once you're at the top, it's hard to keep going up. Sure, it's easy to fall, but what's the fun in that? This drive has been instilled in us from a very young age, but there comes a point where the goal has been attained and then it's over. It all becomes average.

Being an honors student, I never knew what "average" meant. I was always challenging myself to do better, so naturally I felt like college would be the perfect challenge for me. However, I had clearly not mentally prepared myself enough because it became hard. I could handle it and I did all of my work, but I started to realize that this is what average felt like. Just getting by, not completely understanding what was happening, but enough to skim by with a C+ on a paper.

Mentally, I was exhausted. I could not get the perfect grades that I was so used to seeing because that was my average. In my head, these less than satisfactory grades were essentially failing. I was doing all that I could (without having a mental breakdown) to get my work to be the best, but even then I was still succumbing to the new "average."

Eventually, I hit a wall. I didn't care anymore. If I couldn't get my grades where I wanted them, then it didn't matter at all, right?

No. Wrong. Bad.

This "failing" sense that I acquired was not failing at all, truth be told it was just average grades. I had trained my brain for so long that an A was an average grade that I forgot that a C was not the end of the world. In fact, in many cases a C is a perfectly acceptable grade. This mentality is toxic, but I see it more and more happening to people just like me who expect to meet these same standards they set for themselves in high school. It's hard to feel like anything but a failure.

College is a whole new playing field. The rules change, usually to your disadvantage, and sometimes adaption is required to move along. But all in all, that's okay. Sometimes, you need to change the game in order to beat your previous score. Or, in my case; quit the game, start a new one, and take on a better challenge. Don't beat yourself up over not attaining those beautiful A's you may have received in high school. The adaption will happen, not over night, but soon enough for you to see that average is okay. You set these standards yourself, now go out and change them.