Student Blog: I Wanted To Be A Neuroscientist?

Have you ever been told that you're special, an old soul, or very mature for your age? Was any grade below 95% considered "failing" to you? Were you constantly participating in every activity humanly possible? If so, you may be entitled to financial compensation. 

Unfortunately, there is no financial compensation. Fortunately, you're not alone. 

When I was in kindergarten, my parents were convinced that I would become a lawyer when I grew up. I "loved to argue," and that was seen as a perfect trait for a lawyer. My dream at five years old was to own a dance studio or be a Rockette, but somewhere inside I felt that was unattainable or underwhelming compared to the expectations everyone in my life had for me. 

As I got older, my anxiety worsened, which meant my need to be "perfect" skyrocketed to unattainable heights. I had my sights set on attending Yale University or Oxford University to study neuroscience or cognitive behavioral science. I was convinced by the age of twelve that I was meant to do extraordinary things like cure cancer or discover some unknown mystery of the human brain. Except I didn't love science. I was fascinated by science and math, performing well in those classes. What I would later find out was that I really did not want to spend the rest of my life in school to get a Ph.D. in order to pursue a career as a lab rat. 

I wanted the accolades that came with these academic successes. I wanted to finally have the academic I so strongly craved. I wanted to feel like I was worth something and the only way I knew how was to be smarter than the people around me. That was the only way that I thought people would finally respect me. Boy was I completely misguided. 

In my sophomore year of high school I took a class in biomedical science. It's an amazing program that I absolutely hated. I loved the chemistry class that I took the year prior, yet biomedical science was an absolute bore for me. This is when I began to realize that something didn't add up. 

I hated science labs and science homework. These classes no longer felt fun and exciting, they felt like chores. For the first time in my life, I was struggling to really find a focus on my school work. Nothing inspired me. I felt like I could never attain the 4.0 GPA that I had maintained for my entire life up until that point. Then, in the spring of my sophomore year of high school, the false reality I had built my academic career on shattered to pieces. 

I was bored and absolutely exhausted. Everything felt like a chore. Classes, speech and debate practices, dance classes. I felt like an alien. Until I auditioned for the Broadway Workshop's production of "Chicago."

I was reminded of my three-year-old self, the little girl who stepped into dance class for the first time and fell in love. She knew right then and there that the stage was her home. It only took me a decade to actually accept that fact. 

I had become burnt out trying to be someone I wasn't. As a child, I was lauded for how articulate and intelligent I was. The adults loved my grades and my peers bullied me for my personality. I decided that if I hated my personality just as much as my peers did, then I had to fall in love with who I was academically just like all the adults in my life. 

A decade of my life was devoted to maintaining amazing grades to the degree of having severe panic attacks after hours of studying for stressful classes at the age of seven or eight. This pattern didn't stop until I was eighteen years old. I spent a decade ignoring the things I loved (reading, writing, dancing, and performing) in order to satisfy a deep-seated need to prove my "intellectual superiority" to those around me. 

It wasn't until I joined the Drama Club at my high school that I remembered my love of performing. Not just my love of performing, but my absolute dedication to the craft. I was miserable in every aspect of my life during my junior and senior years of high school, my crippling anxiety/depression being compounded by the global pandemic. I had multiple panic attacks a day for months at a time. However, the second I stepped onto the stage I was transcended. I was no longer the girl who cried over only making it to quarterfinals at speech and debate tournaments or chastised herself over an 85% on an exam/assignment. I became the three-year-old girl who would never ever, under any circumstances, give up on the stage. 

Academic burnout is ever-present in my life to this very day, but it doesn't define me anymore. I am just Sabrina. I'm a writer, a dancer, an actress, an avid reader. Most of all, I'm a person who isn't defined by "failure." I'm perfectly imperfect doing what I love and I couldn't be more proud.