The hallways between classes feel less like a break and more like a transition, one rush that bleeds into another. Backpacks swing, conversations blur together, and deadlines stack on top of the previous ones that we couldn’t keep up with. Everyone moves with intention, or at least what looks like the mere appearance of it. There’s always a place to be, classwork to be finished, or something to prove.
We are constantly running. Running to the future, the destiny that we believe we deserve. But if you were to ask most students where they’re going, would the answer be as clear as it seems it should be?
Success, in theory, is meant to be personal. It’s supposed to mean something different to each and every student, shaped by their own values, goals, and lives. But somewhere along the path, that idea has been replaced. In its place, something of uniform, rigor, and measurability has claimed its residence: grades, rankings, and college names.
Junior Kayla Nartey described success in a way that felt both honest and familiar. She explained that in competitive environments like Northern Virginia, “everyone wants the highest grades… being the best at all times.” In an atmosphere of such repulsive competition, success begins to lose its individuality, which makes it so unique and specifically catered to each student. It becomes less about what we want, and more about what we’re supposed to want, according to external pressures.
Similarly, junior Vellen Gandhi noticed this pattern as well, explaining that “a lot of people have success based on… getting into college, doing well, being the best. [In environments like ours,] everyone wants to be like the best of the best.” she said.
When everyone is chasing the same thing, it becomes so easy for our minds to become susceptible to the generational curse that has been defining success for ages–to want what everyone else wants because we believe it’s the only form of success that truly exists, for anything less than that standard doesn’t count.
Nartey pointed out that success doesn’t always have to be something extravagant to be seen as impressive, and that smaller wins may seem subtle but are the most embellished successes of them all.
“Success can be just…I made it to school today,” she said. “Or I finally passed.”
Gandhi reinforced this idea in a different way, emphasizing that success itself isn’t one size fits all, either: “I think everyone has their own individual perception of success… it should be personal.”
It’s a simple idea, but it feels almost out of place in a culture that constantly demands more from their youth, whether it’s more achievement, more productivity, or more proof that we are progressing.
There’s an unspoken rule that success only matters if it’s visible; if it can be measured, compared, or validated by the judges of society. Because of that, the smaller achievements that are more personal, are often overlooked and unadmired. In the worst case, they’re dismissed entirely, as if they never existed in the first place.
At the same time, success isn’t created only in isolation. For many students, it’s shaped long before they can even fathom to define it for themselves. Nartey acknowledged that her own understanding of success is deeply influenced by her parents and what their expectations, sacrifices, and hopes for her future are.
“My parents always say, ‘You should do better than us,’” she said. “‘We came to America so you could achieve more.’”
Gandhi reflected on this tension as well, recognizing that while outside influences exist, they don’t always define everything. For her, success was more of an internal feeling than external validation: “I want to…be happy…living my life.”
Through this, success becomes a sort of heirloom, inherited and carried for as long as its light shines, influencing our perspectives into being something that we wouldn’t have thought of on our own. It’s not a personal goal anymore; it distorts itself into a responsibility that must be carried, for if it falls, so does our lineage.
And that’s where things begin to blur, because how does one separate what they want from what has been expected of them? How can a person know if the path they walk on is theirs, or if it’s just one that they’ve been conditioned to follow?
In a place where competition is constant and expectations are abnormally high, it’s easy to stop asking those questions altogether. It’s easier to keep moving, to keep achieving, to keep running to a place that is only recognized as the unknown.
The truth is, everything could be going right, all the right steps could be checked off, every expectation could be met, yet the feeling of uncertainty could still reside in its throne of despair.
Something could still feel like it’s missing, because even success can leave a void so empty that it’s as if there was nothing there to begin with, no matter how impressive and shiny it looks from its outside.
But maybe that’s the quiet reality that should be spoken of.
Not everyone is running towards something meaningful. Some of us have been running for so long that we don’t even know how to stop. Or maybe, it’s the fear of understanding that makes us continue to run, the truth of facing the one question that we’ve been avoiding all along: where am I actually trying to go?
The answer may not be immediate, and most of the time, it’s not supposed to be.
But maybe, for once, success isn’t about moving faster or doing more. Maybe it’s about pausing time just enough to decide if the path we’re travelling is the one we’ve chosen for ourselves, because in truth, running without a destination isn’t even ambition, but it’s motion without end.
