“Life is a test,” my mom would say as she brushed my hair in the morning. And as my feet were laced into shiny leather shoes and my arms pushed through the sleeves of my starched blue blazer, my mom would wave me goodbye as I stepped into the school bus. I understood. Life is a test. Start preparing for what is to come. So my four-year-old self would skip down the hallway, ribbons in my hair bouncing and footsteps light, but the immeasurable weight of the books in my backpack and the pressure and expectations weighing me down.

I grew up in a small apartment in Hong Kong, shared with a father who was tough but soft around the edges and a mother who was as warm as she was strong. They tried their best to help me grow up into a daughter that they could be proud of. To them, this meant extra math practice, swim lessons, ballet classes, as well as constant monitoring of my grades and achievements. I got used to it. I knew that this was just my parent’s way of loving me. Tough love, they would say as I was reprimanded for a low math grade. But I held my head high. I had a purpose.

At the young age of 5, I began studying for exams and absorbing as much information as I could into my tiny head. It was always about being one step ahead of everyone else, one jump ahead of the crowd, along with an unspoken rule that this was the only way to succeed in life. Academic drive fueled all of my peers, their eyes bright and lips set firm as I was encouraged to do the same. It was constant competition about who wrote the best essay, who could run the fastest, jump the highest, who could outpace the rest of us and emerge as the ultimate victor.

I put my all into this race. I would stay up late studying for tests, memorizing vocabulary and typing out analytical essays about novels I would hardly remember at the end of the semester. And I was proud of my achievements, of the A on my report card and the mildly kind comments on my Chinese exam.

But as always, it was never enough.

When I was 14, our family moved to the Bay Area, California. Adjusting was hard. I was used to being surrounded students who would fight tooth and nail to get to the top, and now, here I was. The American students lived in the moment. It was all about lunchtime and friends and who’s-dating-who, instead of the constant chatter about who-scored-what-on-the-chemistry-test that I was used to. It was refreshing, but also scary, because halfway around the world, the battle hadn’t stopped just because of my departure. I couldn’t get left behind.

My parents had both attended prestigious universities and expected me to do the same. In their minds, it had all been planned out since the day I’d been born: I’d start to study for the SAT in Freshman year, score perfectly, get into a Top 3 University, then live happily ever after. Simple, right?

The towering stack of SAT books and practice tests helped convince me otherwise. As a sophomore, I’m afraid. I’m scared that I’m not good enough, and that all my efforts will lead me on a path to nowhere, or worse, into a life that I find unsatisfying. There are days when I feel absolutely exhausted by the 5 clubs I hold positions in or soccer practices and test prep. Or sometimes, during a moment of pride in my own work, I force myself to step back and realize that it's not enough.

The future is all sorts of terrifying to me. I feel like I have so much to lose, and that every day spent not working towards my goals is a lost opportunity. Would my four-year-old self be proud of the person I have become?