As a fresher in the Faculty of Social Sciences, my first Political Science course felt like learning a new language. My coursemates seemed to follow along easily while I sat there quietly lost, reading the same page three or four times just to keep up. I didn’t tell anyone. I just kept going, slowly, until the words started to make sense.
By the time they did, I had learned something more useful than political theory: that slow progress is still progress. That showing up when you feel out of your depth is its own kind of discipline.
The night I should have slept
Two weeks ago, I started a small business. The first few days brought no sales. My sister would call to check in and I would joke, “Should I just quit?” We laughed, but the doubt underneath was real.
Around the same time, I was taking on more than I could carry. More activities, more responsibilities, more late nights. I convinced myself that rest was a luxury I could not afford, that every hour I wasn’t working was an hour wasted.
One night, at 2 a.m., a small voice in my head said: go to sleep. You still have a 7 a.m. class. What you’re doing right now can wait.
I ignored it.
Looking back, nothing I did that night was urgent. It could all have waited until morning. But I had built a routine out of pushing through: sleeping late, waking early, skipping meals, never stopping. Until my body stopped for me. The stress and exhaustion caught up all at once, and I got sick in a way I couldn’t ignore. I had been treating myself like a machine, and machines, eventually, break down.
“I didn’t need more motivation. I needed rest. There is a difference.”
What getting sick taught me about growth
Being forced to stop was the thing that finally made me look honestly at what I had been doing. Not with judgment, just with clarity. I asked myself: what is actually working, and what is just noise?
The answer was uncomfortable. Most of the late nights had not made me better. They had made me depleted. The comparison to coursemates who seemed to be doing more had not pushed me forward. It had just made me feel small. The pressure to keep up had not produced progress. It had produced exhaustion.
Growth, I was learning, does not look like constant output. It looks like reading the same page three times until it clicks. It looks like a business with no sales on day one and a sister on the phone making you laugh about it. It looks like choosing sleep at 2 a.m. because you know your body needs it to do anything useful at 7.
Progress is not a straight line
I am not the same person I was when the semester started. I still don’t have all the answers. Some days, I still want to disappear. But I have stopped measuring myself against other people’s pace, their highlights, how effortless they make it look. The only comparison that tells me anything true is the one between who I was last month and who I am today.
That gap, however small, is where growth lives.
Becoming is not about being perfect. It is about showing up, making mistakes, resting when you need to, and coming back. Rest is not the opposite of progress. It is part of it.
I’m still becoming. And so are you. Give yourself permission to rest. That is not giving up. That is how you keep going.
