Do I have no chill?

As most people begin to wind their day down at 10 pm, my mind is still racing and I am still wide awake. The uneasiness of anxiety was starting to settle in. I ask myself, "is there something I forgot to do?" I began to go over a checklist in my head to see if there was an assignment or something that I forgot to do. When I cleared that checklist, I went onto the Calendar app on my phone to see what I have scheduled for the next day, it was an effort to see if there was something I missed that could explain why I was in bed so early.

This wasn't the first night I had this kind of anxiety. It reminded me a bit of Elizabeth Spiers' article, A Defense of Jeremy Strong (and All the Strivers with No Chill). There has always been this familial pressure to succeed and make the most out of the opportunity of my parent's sacrifice to immigrate to the United States. So, I grew up with pressure from my parents to succeed. When I was old enough to realize the opportunity I had, I put that pressure on myself. This pressure has continued in my goal of going to law school and even now while I'm in law school. Although I did not know of the name at the time, I was really pushed to partake in "hustle culture." It was constantly drilled into me that hard work pays off and a strong work ethic leads to achievement. 

The article discusses a critique on corporate culture, focusing on the "unsustainably long work hours, cutthroat competitiveness...", which reminded me of my own path to law school. I come from a community where we are taught to strive for at least UCs. So, at a young age, my schedule was packed with extracurriculars. On weekdays, I would head to school around 7 am, and I probably won't be home until about twelve hours later.  I was in summer school every summer until the summer before college. I was in at least one sport at all times. Sometimes I would be in Chinese school or tutoring sessions for some other subject. Part of it was that my parents didn't want me to just be at home and not doing anything. Another part is that I needed to pack my resume with extracurriculars and that my grades needed to be top-tier. Even as I started college and law school, in places where I did not have someone pushing me nor was there a need to be this much of a workhorse, I continued this "striving with no chill". I used to joke with my friends that I was uncomfortable with having free time. One of my friends pointed out that every time we talked, I seemed to have a new thing that I was doing. 

When we started law school during the pandemic, it didn't sit well with me that I didn't have any extracurricular activities. I felt like I needed to keep busy and have a full resume. Although there was a  heavy emphasis on my academics, I still felt the need to pack my schedule with other things. So, I joined student government, a clinic, and a journal. It was a lot. Honestly, it was a bit too much. I really could have done without one of these extracurriculars. 

As I got more involved through the year, I met a lot of other "strivers with no chill." I remember distinctly that there was this 3L, who had a significant paragraph of a list of all the positions he was holding at the time as an email signature. That pushed me to have heavy schedules for my 2L and 3L years. 3L has been a constant juggle between taking time to de-stress and the guilt of taking time away from my studies, work, and responsibilities. 

I'm realizing now that I am about to achieve what I strove for. I am about to leave education for the final time and enter the "real world." I wonder if I can finally stop striving not chill and enjoy what I have worked so hard to build. Because the one thing I learned about the pandemic is that this level of work is not sustainable and that a healthy work-life balance is very important to get through work. Another question that emerged from this blog post is "this all worth striving for?" I've been feeling so drained. I barely have the energy to do my readings, and I haven't really been outlining my classes. Has keeping myself so busy these past years, really been worth it?