These School-Taught Beliefs Will Make You Burn Out if You Don’t Stop Them
Take it from a 30-something who sees her peers dropping like flies
Getting a good education is both a privilege and a curse. It’s great to develop knowledge and analytical skills, but our educational system also tends to ruin our ability to trust our instincts. If we’re not careful, we develop a set of beliefs that will limit our potential in the future, when we go out into the real world. Eventually, these beliefs can even cause burnout.
It took me a while to recognize these beliefs, but when I finally did ー and dismantled them ー my life improved tremendously. Here they come.
Getting good grades is important
At school, grades are all that matters. I used to take pride in being top of my class. And because of my grades, I honestly expected that employers would line up to hire me. But when I graduated, an economic crisis was in full swing and nobody wanted to hire me. Nobody even cared about my grades. I had to kick start my career with an unpaid internship.
It taught me a valuable lesson: grades are just metrics. They’re made to seem important, but they’re not. I had worked my ass off for something that didn’t matter. A number. And in the real world, we…
