One of the few things I feel confident in saying is that, as a teenager, I was a high achiever. Not just anyone gets voted ‘(second place) Biggest Teacher’s Pet’ in their school yearbook, after all. That summer, while my classmates were going to Zante and Benidorm, I went on a girls’ trip to Magaluf – with my grandma. I had actually wanted to go on a tour of the battlefields of the US Civil War (yes, I’m serious), but that was a hard sell. I spent most of the holiday performatively reading Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot on a sunlounger, which really only left one person looking idiotic. After all, I was still only second place Biggest Teachers’ Pet. The miraculous fulfilment that would come with being the ambiguously-defined ‘best’ remained elusive.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel insecure as I recoiled in the shade with my Russian literature in a pallid, vampiric way. I was draped in a sort of Victorian smock, and surrounded by attractive, bikini-clad women. But being good at things was really the only thing I was good at. Yet I was also embarrassed that my legacy among my peers from school is that I’m just a massive try-hard, who isn’t even the best at that. Second place Biggest Teachers’ Pet was all I knew how to be.

“If I could just keep winning, maybe I wouldn’t have to accept that I felt like a loser”

When I was seventeen, I had a Cambridge offer and was a youth parliamentarian who gave speeches at the UN. I broadcast every Zoom meeting I attended to my 600 devoted Twitter followers like I was the president of a small country. I was even called ‘inspirational’ once, though it never sat right with me. I assumed everything else would follow. If I could just keep winning, maybe I wouldn’t have to accept that I felt like a loser. I hadn’t reckoned with how lost I’d feel in my first supervision, or sinking in conversations at Cambridge where, despite all the hours spent with The Idiot, I realised how little I’d read. I also realised that my feelings of social and romantic ineptitude weren’t just the fact that no one at my school got me; the polar opposite environment of university left just one common denominator. The lingering fear that I bring the same vibe to social events as Mark from Peep Show has only been heightened.

Then came the job applications, which I’ve left with nothing to show for myself but an AI-generated transcript of my insecurities. The paradoxically impersonal emphasis on personality of these aptitude assessments means that, according to them, good grades be damned, I am not good enough. And in truth, I never have felt like enough. But I thought being the best could fix this.

Now I’m facing the music. Recently, that music was Joni Mitchell’s ‘River’ while drowning my sorrows about the latest rejection (s) with a chai latte in the college bar. So imagine my shock when some men in STEM sat down at my table and started talking about their internships. I was beginning to realise that, perhaps, rejection is something that should be carried with lightness. Sure, logistically speaking, failed job applications aren’t great, but did the faceless application actually render me a failure? I wanted to test my thinking. But unfortunately, my interpersonal skills are, as the online assessments will attest, ‘developing in competence’. It was like I was back in one of those uncanny video scenarios. And I clicked the wrong button.

“I was beginning to realise that, perhaps, rejection is something that should be carried with lightness”

I needed a new achievement. I tried a half-marathon. It didn’t work. I hadn’t anticipated the pathos of the charity fundraising dimension until I ran past t-shirt after t-shirt describing fates that made it clear that running a long distance quickly really isn’t important at all. There was a point around mile ten, as I passed a crowd of cheerful women waving flags emblazoned with my granny’s cause of death, where I decided that it was pointless. I’d been too lazy to make a fundraiser, and too cowardly to tell people that I miss my grandparents. All I was running for was my own wounded pride, and with each mile, I expected the high of feeling like a high achiever.

But my time wasn’t good enough. At the finish line, all I felt was shame. I also realised that what mattered was the sheer joy, and luck, of having parents at the finish line who love me, will love me regardless of my slow half-marathon time, but probably would have had a better morning if we’d all just gone out for brunch.

The ironic thing is, I don’t really care about achievements. Yes, I want a job, but what I really want is to get married and live in a house with lots of pets and children. I want a few friends and Sunday roasts and trips to the pub, and maybe one day to try something audaciously silly and fun, like my Canadian cousin who was recently photographed riding a mechanical bull in cowboy boots. And maybe, I can make peace with being ‘developing in competence’. It’s an idyll that feels even more unlikely than returning to the UN, but this time, no one will be calling me inspirational. I know I’m not going to be the best. But I want to be good.