I almost failed a class. Trust me, you’re going to be okay.
- Kaila Morris
- Jul 30
- 7 min read
Updated: Sep 5
Once, in high school calculus, a group of girls spent fifty minutes debating who was in the top 20% of our graduating class. They passed around their GPAs like gossip-laced trading cards, each name a bid in the silent auction of academic worth. I held my breath as their attention ricocheted from desk to desk, searching for the next name to crown.
Their gaze landed on me. One nodded conclusively.
“Definitely Kaila.”
Their certainty startled me. But before I could protest, they had already moved on, flipping to the next card in the deck.
People have always assumed my intelligence.
It’s not that I disagree. I am a competent human being, after all. But I also believe everyone is intelligent at something. We use the term as a differentiator, when, in fact, it is a communal thing.
Growing up, grades felt like cages—GPA bars, percentile handcuffs. Perhaps my peers assumed my discretion concealed something worth hiding. Maybe it wasn’t that deep at all, and they simply saw my exterior for what it was: the face of the prototypical nerd. Regardless, it was made clear to me that I was “different,” and that my difference was not a good thing. I was shoved out of bus seats, ghosted from lunch tables, and left off birthday lists like a smudge outside the lines of popularity. When the bell rang, my peers were quick to make amends as they requested homework help and lecture explanations.
Amidst the psychological torment, my teachers and family commended my mental aptitude as the greatest constant in my life. Trained into self-doubt, I clung to my grades as proof I mattered. Every above-average test score strengthened the tether between me and my self-esteem. My grades were my love language to myself. I struggled to connect with others and moved through gym class like molasses, yes, but at least I had my unblemished report cards.
Don’t mistake this as bragging. My acuity actually led to some of my most undesirable traits. Because I was a gifted academic, as one may bear a natural talent for sports or arts, I had atrocious study habits. I told myself that, if I was smart, I should be able to understand concepts upon their first explanation. I believed that it was raw intelligence, not hard work, which would allow me to excel at life. I was afraid to say the words “I don’t know,” and yet studying would’ve been shameful, an admittance of my failure.
Truth be told, I don’t know how this mindset came about. Some of it was anxiety. My bullies instilled in me a deep distrust for others and a fear of judgment. I worried that asking for help would ostracize me from those who did support me. I also idolized my older brother, the constellation I mapped my life around, who shone so brightly I mistook the glare for ease. He was popular, a quick wit, a once-in-a-generation wordsmith, a record-setting athlete, and a teacher’s dream. What I didn’t see in my youthful naivety were the agonizing first drafts, the grueling workouts, the slurs he endured as one of the few dark-skinned kids in our school. I compared myself to a version of him that didn’t exist.
My former mindset is one shared by many high-achieving students—and when left unaddressed, it almost always culminates in collapse. I’ve heard the phenomenon referred to as “gifted kid burnout.” I think the truth is much simpler. After a lifetime of low effort, high reward learning, students balk when they encounter a real challenge. For some, the reality check comes when they receive a C on their first university exam. Others implode in the workforce, when assigned complicated tasks under tight deadlines and minimal instruction. I first faltered in September 2018, when I transferred to a new high school. Every month there felt like pulling one more block from an increasingly unstable Jenga tower with the quiet hope I’d stay standing.
Remember my “effortlessly successful” brother? When I transferred from a public middle school to a private high school, I felt as though I had gained one-hundred similarly-talented older sisters. I say “older” because those who knew me from middle school promptly made the class aware that I skipped seventh grade and was just thirteen years old. I was hyperaware of the physical differences between myself and my classmates, who were as much as fifteen months my senior. I also perceived a significant gap in my emotional maturity as I benchmarked myself against some of the most accomplished young women I had ever met. This gap was mostly imagined. But with emotions, it’s easy to manifest insecurity into reality. And so, I began my freshman year with incredible awkwardness. My mop-like haircut, tween wardrobe, and bright teal braces did not help the cause.
What happens when a 13-year-old who has built her worth around her intelligence finally struggles? As I learned in biology that year, decomposition. In chemistry, displacement. And in third-year physics, detonation. Each year, I fell apart in a new way. Even as the pandemic’s grade inflation granted me A-’s and B+’s, my scientific course knowledge was at a failing level. As I saw my peers place at international science competitions and win Presidential scholarships, I told myself I was simply dumb. I forgot the rhythm of wonder, the thrill of not knowing. Learning was no longer a playground, but a battlefield.
It was ironic, then, to hear the girls in my calculus class so convinced of my 4.0 GPA. They overlooked the academic and social struggles which I had assumed were obvious—just as I had done to them. I remember the first time my best friend told me, on a late-night FaceTime, that she thought she was experiencing depression. I was shocked. She smiled more than anyone I knew. Perhaps each of us was experiencing our own implosion, as the rest of the world looked on at a fireworks show.
It wasn’t until college, when the pandemic became past-tense and grade inflation could no longer protect me, that I finally called my struggle what it was. Anxiety and depression, yes, but more than that, I was stubborn. Complacent. I had grown so used to drifting just above water that I didn’t realize how fast I was sinking. At some point, resilience curdles into obstinacy. I was surrounded by support systems: open office hours, student counseling, study sessions. Still, I chose the lonelier path. Pride kept from reaching for the life raft floating beside me. Nobody could help me unless I let them.
I wish I could say I came to this conclusion naturally. In reality, it wasn’t until I almost failed a class that I realized something needed to change.
I remember waking up one cold morning to nausea churning in my stomach. For two and a half months, I had tried to wrap my head around the difference between a discount rate and an interest rate in Managerial Finance. No matter how many videos I watched or textbook chapters I reread, the numbers blurred. The class moved fast, the professor assumed fluency I didn’t have, and for the first time, I couldn’t think my way through it. I sat in the back row for my second midterm, praying the fog would lift, that some small miracle would take pity on me. But it didn’t matter how long I sat there. I couldn’t fix this on my own. That terrified me.
The first email I sent—to my finance professor—felt like confessing a crime. My hands trembled as I drafted it, convinced he’d think me irresponsible and unworthy. But his response was kind. Gracious, even. It was the first time I realized support doesn’t always come with strings. Sometimes, it is an unlocked door, and all you need to do is turn the handle.
Therapy brought a similar feeling. It gave me space to unravel, to name the pressure I’d carried for years, to grieve the version of myself who thought she had to have all the answers. There was no miracle juice. Better, I developed tools to abandon comparison and see myself as more than raw scores and rigid expectations. Therapy handed me a pen and taught me I could revise my story; mid-sentence, mid-fall.
Slowly, I began to redefine what intelligence meant to me. Not speed, not ease, not innate genius. But grit. Curiosity. A willingness to sit with what I didn’t know and try again anyway. Intelligence looked like showing up to class even when my anxiety screamed at me to stay home. It looked like regimented study sessions, self-assigned homework, textbooks overflowing with multicolored annotations. It looked like trying—again, and again, and again.
It’s easy to believe that performance is everything. Our schools reward quantifiable achievement. We’re taught that we can be measured by test scores, rankings, GPAs. Meanwhile, the qualities that make someone a thoughtful teammate—creativity, emotional intelligence, resilience—go unrecognized. At my business school, even participation feels political. Students are commended not for the thoughtfulness of their questions, but for the frequency of their insights, the amount of times they rescue their classmates from the silence in the room. That silence is awkward, yes, but it is also an indicator that I am thinking; crafting a meaningful comment that will add value to the discussion instead of inserting it with meaningless business jargon and buzzwords.
So yes… To some extent, grades are about how well you “play the game.” But even in a flawed system, hard work and honest communication matter.
I still think about that finance class. My professor’s advice—to break things down, day by day, step by step—stayed with me. It’s how I live now. I show up. I take notes. I raise my hand when I can, and when I can’t, I find other ways to engage. I’ve learned to speak up about how my mental health shows up in the classroom; not perfectly, not always confidently, but honestly. And slowly, I’ve started to believe that when you move through the world with care, good people will meet you where you’re at.
When I think about the girl who sat in the back row of finance, too afraid to admit she was drowning, my heart hurts. I wish I could tell her, letting go is not surrender; it’s unclenching your fists so someone else can grab hold. Don’t wait until your Jenga tower collapses. It’s easier to rebuild when you’re not scattered into fifty-four wooden pieces.
Since returning to school, I’ve fallen back in love with learning. Effortless brilliance is a rarity, perhaps an impossibility. I’ve let go of that chase. I’m more interested in the process—the quiet satisfaction of work that hums with integrity, the pride that blooms not from applause but from the whisper, This feels like me. I’m no longer trying to be impressive. I just want to be present. Ink on the page, breath in the room, heart open to the work. That, I think, is enough.